


The Grand Tour

by Cerdic519



Series: Elementary 366 [13]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle, Supernatural
Genre: 221B Baker Street, Austria-Hungary, Balcony Scene, Boats and Ships, Bulgaria - Freeform, Cheating, Costumes, Disguise, England (Country), Europe, F/M, False Accusations, Family, Fan-fiction, Fluff, Framing Story, Friendship, Germany, Italy, Johnlock - Freeform, Journalism, Justice, Kent - Freeform, London, Love, M/M, Male Prostitution, Marriage Proposal, Minor Character Death, Mistakes, Newspapers, Ottoman Empire, Politics, Reichenbach Falls, Religion, Revenge, Romance, Royalty, Russia, Sanctuary, Scandinavia, Servants, Sleeping Together, Slow Burn, Spas, Spies & Secret Agents, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Theft, Threats, Trauma, Vampires, Victorian, coming home, poland - Freeform, romania - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-23
Updated: 2020-04-03
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:33:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 43,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23281801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerdic519/pseuds/Cerdic519
Summary: The Complete Cases Of Sherlock Holmes And John Watson. All 366 cases plus assorted interludes, hiatuses, codas &c.1887-1888. The dynamic duo's sole Continental excursion - but boy, do they make up for it even if the trip was forced on poor Watson! There is a dodgy king, a false princess, a corrupt politician and a seemingly dead nobleman, then for the first but not the last time Reichenbach plays a pivotal role in the good doctor's life, followed soon after by a balcony scene, the exchanging of rings, and enough fluff to sink a battleship! Next it is on to some stolen cameos, a vampiric death, a political assassination and a dead man walking before there is a new and rather large man in their lives who wishes them to attempt the impossible – to stop a lady who has set her mind on doing something! And then they are back in Baker Street, together if not yet 'together together' as Sherlock's fearsome mother somehow thinks.At least, not yet.....
Relationships: Lucifer/OMC, Sherlock Holmes & John Watson, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Series: Elementary 366 [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1555741
Kudos: 20





	1. Contents

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vitabear](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vitabear/gifts), [bookworm4ever81](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookworm4ever81/gifts).



> This series is completely written and will be updated daily until done.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Contents page.

** 1887 **

**Interlude: Some Day**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_Watson has another Moment as he says goodbye to England_

 **Case 127: Travails In The German Bight**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_The King Of Scandinavia is not what he seems, and a schoolboy faces death_

 **Case 128: The Adventure Of The Dutch Princess**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_Royalty may have privileges, but surely not the right to commit murder?_

 **Case 129: The Adventure Of The Frightful Frankfurter**  
by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire  
_Some foolish journalists target Watson – a bad mistake on their part_

 **Case 130: The Adventure Of The Noble Bachelor**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_De'Ath's man dies a death – or does he?_

 **Interlude: The G-word**  
by Lady Aelfrida Holmes  
_Someone utters That Dreadful Word in the authoress's Presence_

 **Interlude: Reichenbach And Rings**  
by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire  
_The Falls – and a life-changing moment for Sherlock and John_

 **Case 131: The Adventure Of The Vatican Cameos**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_Sherlock meets his annoying brother Guilford and finds a shooter_

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** 1888 **

**Case 132: The Valley Of Fear**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_Vampires and Welshmen as the two men skirt Transylvania_

 **Case 133: The Adventure Of No-Man's-Land**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_Sherlock must secure justice for a dead man - oh, and avoid a war_

 **Case 134: A Scandal In Bohemia**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_A costume party at which everyone hears the fatal shot – or do they?_

 **Case 135: The Adventure Of The Tide-Waiter**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_A hulking official worries about his brother, so asks Sherlock to do the impossible_

 **Interlude: Together**  
by Mr. Lucifer Garrick, Esquire  
_The devil has more things to worry about than a too-slow denial_

 **Interlude: Together Together**  
by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire  
_John's and Sherlock's relationship has changed somewhat_

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	2. Interlude: Some Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1888\. Grown men, especially professional and highly-skilled doctors, do not cry. They may however get watery eyes on board a ship at sea, especially in a strong wind.

_[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D.]_

I had always thought of the White Cliffs Of Dover as being one of the first things that people see when they come to England. So it seemed strange that the first time that I actually saw them in my life was from the back of the boat sailing over to Calais on what was mercifully a calm sea. I was leaving England barely a year after I had come back from Egypt, my return date at best uncertain. 

I felt bitterly angry that the allegations made by that dratted Mrs. Beddowes-Griffin were destroying my good name, and that I was powerless to stop it. First 'John Watson' had been associated with the greatest traitor of the century and now he was apparently a lecher who preyed on rich women. I hoped that Sherlock was right and the truth would come out one day, enabling me to return. It was a question of first disproving the allegations and then waiting for the fuss to die down. In the meantime my life was ruined while hers sailed merrily on.

Karma had a lot to answer for at times like these.

Although the sea was calm there was a strong breeze blowing us away from England, and I felt my eyes watering as I stood watching the country that I loved slowly disappear from view. At least I had my friend next to me, his inhuman heat as strong as ever. I moved instinctively closer and sighed at the unfairness of it all.

Some day. Some day I would return.

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	3. Case 127: Travails In The German Bight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1887\. Holmes's first venture to the Continent concerns the tangled skein of Anglo-German politics around a small island in the German Ocean. And he once again proves himself rather more than a friend to a certain medical acquaintance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mentioned also as the case concerning the King of Scandinavia.

_[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D.]_

Foreword: The German Empire (a country larger than modern Germany prior to the quite justifiable and minor territorial corrections after the Great War) contained many nominally independent sub-states three of whom – Saxony, Württemberg and Bavaria – retained their kings. In practice however Prussia, constituting over half the Empire's population and size, pretty much ran things as it wanted hence the adjective 'Prussian' was used interchangeably with 'German' to describe the country, much as (rather ironically) it is today mostly the Germans who use 'English' when they actually mean 'British'.

I also need to explain that at the time of this story Norway was still in a Personal Union with Denmark, hence the senior partner had a border (if a cold and barren one) with Russia which was of course of interest to Great Britain. The old Danish royal dynasty, the Oldenburgs, had died out with King Frederick the Eighth back in 1863. He had been succeeded by a distant cousin Christian the Ninth, first king of the House of Glücksburg. We British had been instrumental in securing the new king's succession (London Protocol of 1852), Christian's daughter Alexandra having married our own Prince of Wales at the start of the Eighties. Despite this it was rumoured that the new Danish king was far too pro-German and that as such he might well be amenable to dealing with Berlin rather than London. I would have thought that the Danes might have learned their lesson after the bloody nose we had given them – twice – during the Napoleonic Wars, which had led to us acquiring these pebbles, but apparently they had forgotten. 

Or they needed another lesson.

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To those who know not of our destination, Heligoland consists of two small islands some forty-five miles from the German coast. They had become a British possession when captured from Denmark during the Napoleonic Wars back at the start of the century, having been used to help break the attempted French blockade of our islands and get British goods into the Continent despite Napoleon's worst efforts (mysteriously, all the Little General's top officials somehow always seemed to be plentifully supplied with our 'banned' goods!). I assumed that the islands had been retained as a deterrent against any further French moves against northern Europe although they had not really been fortified much, and with a now united Germany becoming ever more belligerent they were more of an embarrassment to both London and Berlin than anything else. 

I had been unprepared for just how small even the main island was; a mile long and less than half a mile wide. At least I would not be subject to any long walks! Unfortunately it was a case of not small enough as it came with a most unpleasant catch; an impatient lounge-lizard waiting for us at the hotel, to wit Mr. Randall Holmes. He also had someone with him or at least someone that he was keeping an eye on across the foyer; a fair-haired blue-eyed boy of about sixteen years of age, apparently engrossed in a work of romantic fiction of some sort. Honestly, boys these days!

Holmes chuckled at his brother’s evident discomfiture. 

“All right, Randall”, he smiled. “What have you done _this_ time?”

His brother drew himself up and sniffed haughtily.

“I have ‘done’ nothing”, he muttered, clearly not wishing to be overheard even though we were secreted in a quiet part of the hotel’s main reception room. “That dratted boy….”

He drew a deep breath before continuing.

“I came over from Wilhelmshaven four days back because the governor here is having the vapours about these few pebbles becoming a major European incident”, he said crossly. “And that little runt over there managed to secrete himself on board the boat, then told the hotel staff that he had come over with me!”

“Who is he?” I asked.

“Peter Sonderburg”, the nuisance said, scratching his nose with a long, carefully manicured finger. “Trust a Viking to manage to cross the seas at the wrong time!”

“Is he someone important?” I asked thinking that the boy did indeed have something of the Viking about him.

“The potential King of Denmark just because the current one’s great-something-or-other-grandfather could not keep it in his trousers!” Mr. Randall Holmes moaned. “The Germans were cock-a-hoop over this beforehand; they will be unbearable now. There is no way that we can just ship him back; the brat knew full well what he was about.”

“Putting to one side any remarks about people keeping it in their trousers which might well lead us onto the subject of pots, kettles and a rather dark shade of grey”, Holmes said with a smile, “I presume that the Germans will threaten to make a diplomatic incident of the matter when they 'just happen to discover' your kidnapping of the boy. They will demand as the price of their forbearance that Her Majesty’s Government support or at least remain neutral in their pushing the boy’s claim forward. Their newspapers are already proclaiming him 'the King of Scandinavia'; the Russians have accused Berlin of using him to stir up separatist feelings in their Finnish territories.”

“They cannot honestly think that King Christian will just give up his throne to a boy!” I scoffed. 

Mr. Randall Holmes looked like he was about to say something rude to me in reply but he caught his brother's warning look just in time. He visibly bit back his annoyance. I did not crow.

I did _not_ crow, despite someone's disapproving look. Smirking is not the same as crowing. So there!

“They hope to wring some concessions instead”, Holmes explained, eyeing his brother balefully as he spoke. “The island of Bornholm in the eastern Baltic, for example, is small but strategically important. The Germans might offer to set the boy up in his own puppet kingdom there and thereby control a key part of their seaways in all but name.”

“I see”, I said. “So if the boy were to be found to have been kidnapped by a British government agent....”

“I did _not_ kidnap the brat!” the lounge-lizard hissed, this time a little too loudly. The boy in question looked up from his book and smiled across at the three of us. Holmes looked thoughtfully across at him then nodded.

“This case will indeed require some investigation”, he said firmly. “Here and in Wilhelmshaven, I think. Watson, I shall need you to do some work here while I go there tomorrow. I shall be back by evening.”

“Of course”, I said, still not crowing over Mr. Randall Holmes's discomfiture.

Holmes looked at me again, and I sighed. _That_ had not changed just because we had left England, worse luck!

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There was a telegram for Holmes that evening, and as he had gone to the bathroom I signed for it. I did not mean to but in glancing at it I saw what looked like a set of letters and numbers. Presumably someone was writing to him in code; I gave him the message when he returned and he looked at it carefully before smiling slightly.

“Good news?” I asked.

To my surprise he looked a little uncertainly at me.

“I arranged for Miss St. Leger to track how the newspapers are following the story of Mrs. Beddowes-Griffin”, he said. “The coverage is dying down at about the rate she expected, although the fact that the woman is the widow of a relatively well-known member of parliament is not helping.”

“All those wiseacres back home will still be saying that there is no smoke without fire, and that this is the second time I have been forced to flee the country”, I sighed.”

“As I had feared she might, the pestilential female has been saying in private that she was forced into that confession”, he said angrily. “So I have instructed Miss St. Leger to remind her that we have the potential to ruin her if she persists in that. I know that there will always be some exceptionally stupid people out there but I will not have the likes of her ruin the reputation of the man that I.... admire more than any other.”

I nodded my thanks and retreated behind my paper, my thoughts suddenly racing like an express train. That hesitation – what has he been about to say before he had changed his mind? Surely not....?

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When I came down from our rooms the following day I quickly realized that whatever my friend had been about to say to me the day before was Not To Be Spoken About. Unusually my friend retreated behind a newspaper at the breakfast table although I still got a look of thanks when I duly forked over half my bacon to him. As I said, some things did not change.

Yet something had changed. Holmes had to depart to catch the morning ferry and before leaving he re-iterated that he would be back around five. He was never one for physical expressions but before leaving he pulled me into an embrace that went on for rather longer than was socially acceptable. We were however in an isolated part of the eating area and I did not feel the least bit inclined to remove myself from his inhuman warmth.

Yes, it did last for several minutes. It was a cold day.

It _was!_

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The pest of a lounge-lizard took his unwonted Viking guest out on a trip to the other island that day so I could make a search of the boy's room. I found very little of interest except that he had a collection of the works of the currently popular American author Mark Twain, whose recent work 'Huckleberry Finn' I had enjoyed while down in Egypt. I made a note to mention his literary choices to Holmes; doubtless he would solve the whole case from such a trifle!

I should not have been so cynical. The detective's eyes lit up when I showed him the list of titles that I had gathered.

“An unusual choice of literature”, he mused with an irritatingly knowing smile. “Mr. Twain is rumoured to be writing a story about an American being transported back in time to the court of King Arthur. Sometimes I wonder about the way his country exercises their jealously-guarded freedom of speech!”

I smiled at that.

“Did you find anything of interest in Wilhelmshaven?” I asked. 

“I did”, he said. “I went to Herr Bernhart Rustringen's house.”

“Who?” 

“One of Germany's most powerful spymasters and a key player in the events surrounding 'the King of Scandinavia'”, Holmes explained. “The kind thing to do would of course to go and find Randall in order to put him out of his misery as soon as possible.”

He instead called a waiter over for some coffee. I liked him even more just then.

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We went for a walk around the whole island (what little there was of it) before dinner and my feelings towards it improved with the sunny if occasionally blustery weather which seemed determined to to blow us into the sea. I was not sure how but I could detect that my recent crisis seemed to have changed my friend almost more than it had myself. Holmes was far more 'clingy' than usual and at one point near a lookout spot he moved so close to me that we were touching. Yes there were many layers of clothes between us but I could still feel his inhuman warmth coming through to me and I felt strangely comforted despite my recent problems. Whatever the future held, I had this man beside me. I always would have. I would be fine.

We met the lounge-lizard and his young charge at dinner, so apparently my prayers for a convenient tidal-wave or a boat sinking had not been granted. We ordered our food and, once it had come, Holmes turned to the boy.

“I have been mulling this over”, he said, “and I have a question for you. Do you _really_ wish to be a king?”

“No!” the boy said forcefully, “and I told your brother that! I cannot help who my parents or my ancestors were; I wish they had never done whatever the hell they did to put me through all this!”

“Then it is easily sorted”, Holmes said producing a smart brief-case from under the table (when had he put that there, I wondered?). He extracted a piece of paper and a pen and placed both in front of the boy. “This is a legally backed Certificate of Revocation. By signing it in front of two witnesses – the doctor and myself should suffice – you formally waive all claim to all the thrones of Scandinavia. It is short, to the point and you should read it before signing of course. I managed to find an English-speaking lawyer while I was in Wilhelmshaven and he drew it up in both German and English for me. I know that you can read both languages.”

“Of course”, the boy said transferring the paper to his left to scan it more thoroughly before neatly signing his name at the bottom of both parts. Holmes added his and I mine, then my friend folded the paper and placed it back in the brief-case. He seemed to move to summon a waiter but then apparently changed his mind and we resumed our interrupted meal.

We had almost finished when one of the bell-boys walked across the room and called out, “Telegram for Mr. Jacob Hannover”. The boy started for some reason and I wondered why.

“Should you not answer your telegram, Jacob?” Holmes asked politely.

“What?” I said, confused.

“What?” Mr. Randall Holmes echoed. My friend smiled.

“Gentlemen, allow me to present Master Jacob Hannover, son of one of the richest merchants in Wilhelmshaven”, Holmes said airily as if he was not turning our world on its head. “In some aspects just a regular German schoolboy distinguished only by two things; his close friendship with a certain Master Peter Sonderburg who attends the same school as he does, and a reasonable physical similarity to his friend.”

His brother stared the the boy in shock who, after blushing, looked defiantly back at him.

“Who is 'Jacob Hannover'?” he demanded.

“You are”, Holmes said. “You gave yourself away more than once, you know. The real Peter Sonderburg is right-handed yet you signed that paper with your left hand. Also the faint mark on your collar is from the dye that you use to keep your mousy brown hair blond; boys your age do not usually need to resort to such devices. You were prepared to sign this document as you are not in fact the real 'King of Scandinavia', so you knew that it would be worthless.”

“You still kidnapped me!” the boy pointed out. “When my people find out....”

“Jacob”, Holmes said and his voice was suddenly so menacing that even I shuddered, “believe me when I tell you this. I can guarantee one hundred per cent that they will _never_ find out.”

The boy looked back at him, alarmed. My friend was fixing him with that focussed glare of his, the one that spelt certain doom for those on the receiving end of it. The room was suddenly several degrees colder.

“You are young”, Holmes said icily, “but the world is a dangerous place my boy, and sometimes the follies of youth can have a _very_ high price. Sometimes even the ultimate price – life itself! Doubtless you and Peter thought this a great joke, especially when the opportunity arose so soon after reading the book that gave you the idea.”

“What book?” I asked. Holmes picked up the novel next to the boy's meal.

“This is 'The Prince And The Pauper' by Mr. Mark Twain”, Holmes said. “A curious confection, it tells how a beggar boy and King Edward the Sixth of England swapped roles for a time, and all the chaos that ensued. Young Peter was already in the thrall of Herr Rustringen, who knew that the arrival of a principal English spy in the port was an excellent opportunity to cause embarrassment to London and assist the Fatherland. The outside world could be made to think that the British had attempted to kidnap the boy and the Germans would demand that their adversaries accede to their plans for 'the King of Scandinavia' to avoid any bad publicity.”

“It was still kidnapping”, the boy said weakly.

“Only if they find your body”, Holmes said lightly, cutting up a sausage.

Peter – Jacob - looked round anxiously. Holmes sighed. 

“Jacob, the staff here are all British”, he said calmly. “They have been informed of your true status and that you are a threat to our Nation. You would not make it to the front door, let alone find a way off these remote islands.”

“I sent Peter a telegram earlier”, the boy said defiantly.

“I am afraid that I told the staff to tell you they had sent it”, Holmes said. “No, if you do choose to make a fuss here – well, the seas around these islands are like the old song, deep and wide. Plenty of space in which to dispose of a small body like yours.”

The boy had gone even paler.

“However, if you were to slip back to Wilhelmshaven and pass the whole thing off as a joke”, Holmes said thoughtfully, “then perhaps all might be well. _Perhaps_. Though of course, should by some terrible alignment of the Fates a different story chance to emerge in the future – it is sad, but there are some people in the world who have to live their lives in the knowledge that someone out there is determined to kill them, and that the person hunting them down only has to be lucky the one time.”

“You would kill me?” the boy quavered.

“Not just you”, Mr. Randall Holmes put in. 

The boy looked as if he was going to faint. I had no sympathy for him.

“Death comes to us all”, Holmes said, “but some people tend to draw His attention not just to themselves but also to those dear to them. As I am sure you and your German spymaster are aware, the British have agents across your country, many of whom are keeping their heads down. Sleepers, as they say in the trade. One oddly-worded telegram to one of them and I can guarantee that not only would you be dead within twenty-four hours, but all your nearest and dearest too.”

“You would kill my family?” the boy gasped. “That is evil!”

“No”, Holmes said spearing the last piece of sausage and frowning at his plate. “That is politics. Watson, why is there no bacon?”

I hurried to remedy that terrible oversight on the hotel's behalf.

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Peter/Jacob was dispatched back to mainland Germany on a frigate overnight and from the subsequent failure of the story to emerge into the light of day I assume that fear of the consequences kept him silent, much to Berlin's annoyance. 

I came down to breakfast late the following morning to find the blue-eyed genius alone at breakfast.

“No lounge-lizard?” I grunted, quietly pleased.

“He escorted our vexatious Viking back to Wilhelmshaven and is headed off for some business that he has in France”, Holmes explained forking what looked like half a pig's worth of bacon onto his plate. It was a Saturday and the hotel apparently did a 'buffet breakfast, to my friend's evident delight (and their evident cost!).

“What is the name of your brother's 'business'?” I asked cynically.

“Marie”, he grinned. “And Yvette!”

I rolled my eyes at that.

“When does the boat back to England sail?” I asked.

“Not until this afternoon”, he said. “Randall does also have something to attend to in France apart from two of his many ladies, and asked if we would look into a small matter in the Netherlands. So I thought that we might sail to Wilhelmshaven, spend the night there and travel on round the coast tomorrow.”

“Not another errant schoolboy I hope”, I said, looking a little forlornly at the empty bacon platter. A hotel waiter bustled up and evidently shared my astonishment, before hurrying off to the kitchen. Holmes beamed at me.

“No”, he said. “Royalty again. Possibly real this time. Or possibly not.”

_What?_

“Holmes!” I complained (it was not a whine whatever anyone said). He sniggered.

“We shall leave this afternoon”, he said. “Are you packed?”

“We are not going tomorrow?” I asked.

“Why tomorrow?” he asked, puzzled.

“They do a buffet breakfast on Sunday as well”, I said. I looked pointedly at his plate and the mountain of bacon on it before adding a little testily, “or at least they were planning to!”

He blushed.

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We left on Sunday afternoon.

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Postscriptum: Three years after the events described here Heligoland was exchanged with Germany for Zanzibar and Wituland (the area around Witu and Mombasa) in East Africa, which latter the British used to drive a railway into the heart of the Dark Continent in their ongoing efforts to eliminate the slave trade. The territory was later expanded northwards to form British East Africa, now often called Kenya after its highest mountain.

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	4. Case 128: The Adventure of The Dutch Princess

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1887\. Royalty is rightly afforded certain privileges denied to lesser peoples – but surely those do not extend to murder? Low dealings in the Low Countries mean that Holmes has another diplomatic knot to untangle.

_[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D.]_

It seemed hard to believe that it was barely a week ago that I was being threatened with complete ruination at the hands of that vile Jezebel Mrs. Beddowes-Griffin, yet now Holmes and I were standing on a cold railway platform in northern Germany (I once again had to fight down the thought that I had yet again been forced to flee the country, as it was a little too close to the truth). Yet I had the man who I valued above anyone else, possibly even Stevie, and I was perilously close to being happy.

Something was bound to go wrong soon. I just knew it.

Wilhelmshaven Station was singularly unimpressive, being at the end of a single branch line and looking quite uncared for. It was also extremely exposed, a biting wind blowing in from the German Ocean (as they called the North Sea over here). I shivered, despite the wonderfully thick woollen coat that Holmes that had given me a few years back.

“I wish that your pest of a brother could find a crime somewhere warmer!” I grumbled as we sat on a bench waiting for our train south. “Any more of this and I shall start missing the heat of Egypt!”

He smiled at me, seemingly unaffected by the wind trying to blow us back to Heligoland. I sighed and did not even try to fight the urge to move closer to the inhumanly warm heater beside me. Because.

Having changed at Oldenburg our second train, an irritatingly slow one, took us across the border to Groningen and two Dutch border guards eyed us suspiciously before returning our passports. It was late when we reached the northern Dutch town and I was grateful that my friend had checked us into the station hotel so I did not have far to totter before collapsing face-down onto a surprisingly comfortable bed. I heard a chuckle from behind me then the door shut and he left for his own room.

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The next day we returned to the station and took what was thankfully a much faster train south to Amsterdam, the journey taking just over five hours. The countryside was almost eerily flat, reminding me a little of our time on the Isle of Uffa and the case of the Uffa Poniard. I thought of the two young men whose love for each other had sparked that strange little case; their 'island' in the Fens seemed a lifetime away yet it had been barely four months. Then again, at the start of last year I had still been enduring the heat of southern Egypt.

There was a dining-car on the train and the food was actually not that bad; I had experienced railway fare on but a few occasions and had come to the conclusion that it was best appreciated on even fewer occasions! However they served bacon, which I got to sample one rasher of before the inevitable. A happy Holmes explained that our contact in the Dutch capital wished to meet us as soon as possible so having lunch just before we arrived would save us some time. He then attacked his bacon; I was sure that I did not so much as smile but he still huffed in annoyance.

Our contact, whom Holmes explained was basically his brother Randall's counterpart for the Dutch government, was waiting for us at our hotel and I have to say that he came as something of a surprise. The fellow was that unpleasant lounge-lizard's polar opposite; short of stature and generally unkempt. His name was Martin van Tromp and frankly he could not have looked less like the famous Dutch admiral whose name he bore if he had tried.

“Appearances can be not only deceptive but also quite helpful in the field of espionage, doctor”, he smiled, clearly spotting my ill-concealed reaction. 

I blushed at being caught out like that and 'someone' actually had the nerve to smile at my evident discomfiture. Harrumph!

“Let us adjourn to the privacy of my room here”, our host said, “and I can explain why my country needs your help, gentlemen.”

All right, his inclusion of me in the invitation did make me feel just a bit better. That was something a certain lounge-lizard would never have done in a month of Sundays!

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“You may be aware”, our host began, “that a few months ago our king, William the Third, was declared mentally incapable. A regency council is now ruling for his sole surviving child, his daughter Wilhelmina.”

“He is the Third because the Dutch reset their monarchical numbers when they became a monarchy after the Napoleonic Wars”, Holmes explained, proving himself as psychic as ever. I had indeed been wondering why the Dutch had had a second third William – look, _I_ knew what I meant! - after the one whom they had grudgingly shared with us some two centuries back, an act which had definitely been to our long-term benefit rather than theirs.

“I have to say that this has not been a happy reign”, our host sighed. “The king has mishandled Luxembourg of which he is Grand Duke, upset the Belgians, crossed parliament and offended you British despite your support against the rising threat of a Prussia who keep eyeing Limburg† as rightfully theirs. His second marriage to a woman over four decades his junior has also scandalized society, although at least that has turned out better than we had feared and has certainly proven a lot less turbulent than his first one, thank the Lord. The number of bastards that he has fathered over the years – oh dear. Even only counting those that he has acknowledged, it is well into the thirties.”

I raised an eyebrow at that. Even my country’s most prolific monarch in that department, King Henry the First, had only just made it into the twenties.

“It is one of those that is the problem, I suppose?” Holmes asked sipping at a coffee that he had purloined from somewhere. I stared in annoyance; I was sure that we had asked for three teas. Even though his face remained impassive I somehow knew that he was smirking inside. Maybe his psychic powers were rubbing off on me?

He shook his head slightly. _Damnation!_

“Yes”, Mr. van Tromp said with a sigh. “One Mary King – she has changed her name; she was originally Mary Barton. She was in court the other week and she made the claim through her lawyer. Even more tiresomely, subsequent inquiries seem to indicate that she may have been telling the truth.”

“What crime was she accused of?” I asked.

“Murder.”

I coughed into my tea, spluttering it everywhere with my usual inelegance. Holmes of course remained unperturbed, merely passing his messy friend a napkin.

“So it would doubly be in her interests to claim such a thing”, he mused, “not just for her own benefit but to save her own neck. Even if there were only small justification behind such a claim, the press would have a field-day when her associates 'just happened' to leak the story to them only hours before an execution. Even if it were to be disproved, many would still believe the whole thing to be a government cover-up.”

I privately felt that governments only had themselves to blame for such an attitude, especially the way I had seen them act in some of Holmes's cases. One can only cry 'Wolf!' so often before the villagers stop rushing up the mountainside. 

Our host nodded.

“All in all it does not look good”, he said glumly. “The girl is twenty-two and around the time of her conception her mother, an American actress Mrs. Maria Barton, was indeed one of the king's favoured ladies. One of many of course but definitely a leading favourite. Indeed we have obtained reliable testimony that she was secretly smuggled into the palace on at least one occasion.”

“Disturbing”, Holmes said. “Little wonder than my dear brother passed this case to me; the passage of over two decades makes this an extremely cold case. Frozen, almost.”

Our host’s face fell.

“But it is therefore more of a challenge”, Holmes said cheerily. “Let us have all the information that you have on the woman and her ancestry, then we shall see what we can do.”

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“I wonder how the mother of Miss Mary King feels about this?” I mused as we sat in Holmes's comfortably warm room that evening, perusing the Dutch government’s copious files on the possible murderess. “They are certainly thorough in the flatlands. Everything up to and including a rather too detailed description of the mole on Mrs. Barton's left shoulder!”

Holmes chuckled.

“As you yourself have seen”, he said, “sometimes even the smallest detail can attain an importance far beyond its apparent merit. I wonder….”

He was holding a photograph taken at a court ball, looking between this and what were presumably the other available photographs of Mrs. Barton. Her husband, assuming that that was the fellow standing next to her, looked a rather nasty piece of work, although if he had been an Adonis she might still have preferred to open her legs for royalty. Some women!

“Pass me the file on the woman's family please, Watson”, he said, still looking hard at the ball photograph. 

I did so and he checked something before once more looking hard at the photograph. Then he smiled.

“We may have a lead”, he said. “But I shall have to send a telegram and I am not sure if the person who receives it will want to help or not. Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

I smiled at the old saying and started to clear up the mess as he pulled his coat on.

“I shall be back for dinner”, he said. “This is not a bad hotel, although their failure to serve bacon outside of breakfast is quite unforgivable!”

“Actually, I spoke with one of the bell-boys about that”, I said. “He recommended a small restaurant just around the corner which he knows serves breakfasts for lunch and dinner. It opens for the evening at five o' clock so if you would rather, we can go there.”

I do not know why he was always so surprised when I did some small service like that for him, but it was worth seeing his face light up like a child who has found a couple of hitherto undetected presents under the Christmas tree. He looked so nice when he smiled; I would do anything for him. Including, I knew with the sort of certainty that required no prophetic skills whatsoever, handing over the best part of my bacon at this place.

His nodding was still annoying, though!

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Mr. van Tromp met us the following day over breakfast. There had been no reply to Holmes’s telegram and I still quietly wondered at the modern technology which could get a message anywhere in the world in seconds. Next thing we knew there would be words and pictures as well, and all hope of privacy would be gone!

“The prosecutor in the lady's case is definitely pushing for murder”, our host said with a sigh. “I had wondered if he would risk it – there was apparently a degree of provocation in the matter – but he is determined to make his name with this case. If she is convicted, she will talk. That is guaranteed.”

“Tell us about the case”, Holmes asked.

“She stands accused of murdering a Mr. Leewarden”, Mr. van Tromp explained. “He was something of a ladies' man by all accounts – that would count in her favour in a court case - and it had been thought by several of their friends that the two of them were set to announce their engagement. But there was an argument over his having seen another lady - who turned out to be his sister-in-law, of all things! - and Miss King shot him. In front of two witnesses so there is no doubting that part. She went into another room to fetch the gun which of course shows premeditation, although her lawyer is arguing that it was all done in a moment of anger and because of a misunderstanding on her part. He is also trying to claim that she is not quite twenty-one and therefore not an adult, although in this country murder is murder at eighteen. Still, that may be enough for her to avoid the drop once the newspapers get hold of the story.”

“As her lawyer will ensure they do”, Holmes said dryly. “When did Miss King become aware of her potential royal ancestry?” 

“We do not know”, the man said. “Her aunt, Mrs. Adeline Smith, arrived for a visit from the United States presumably to support her; perhaps she told her.” His eyes widened. “You are not suggesting that that was what led her to....”

“I rather think that in this case her relative is of supreme importance”, Holmes said firmly. “We must endeavour to call on her before she departs as what she has to say may render my telegram moot. Where is she staying?”

“In this very hotel”, Mr. van Tromp said, clearly surprised by the direction of my friend's questions. “Room 201.”

“We shall send up a card at once”, Holmes said, “and see if she will allow us to visit.”

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I wondered as we ascended the stairs as to why the aunt rather than the mother was here to support Miss King. Possibly that was a sign that the mother had disowned the girl either over the murder or her subsequent claims. Or maybe she did not wish to return to the land where she and the king... ugh! Why did society have to allow such behaviour? If anyone had tried to take.....

I stopped that train of thought right there.

Mrs. Smith received us in what was most definitely a state-room. She was a lady in her late forties though still beautiful. Also definitely on edge; she stared at Holmes with a most definite air of anxiety.

“Be assured that the doctor keeps notes only for my own records”, he told her. “No case is ever published if it affects.... the innocent.”

There was a definite meaning behind those last two words, and the lady relaxed visibly.

“How much do you know?” she asked warily.

“I rather think that I know all”, Holmes said with a smile. “Or nearly all. I have but a few questions for you, madam. First, were you a willing party to this charade?”

She nodded.

“Our father died when we were still young”, she explained, “and my mother raised us with help from her sisters. I was fortunate to meet John – my husband – shortly after I came of age and when my mother died soon afterwards she asked me to make sure that dear Maria was taken care of. She married Edward young and against the wishes of the rest of the family, and it was a stormy relationship until they divorced. That was at the end of the year that the four of us came to Europe on one of my husband's business trips and..... she met the king.”

 _First vertically and soon after horizontally_ , I thought acidly. Holmes shot me a disapproving look.

“My husband is out on business”, the lady said, a little defiantly I thought. “Does he need to be informed?”

“That depends on Miss King”, Holmes said mysteriously. “I rather fear that she may not be amenable to keeping things quiet unless her own wretched life is spared. Even the family who helped save that life would take second place.”

I gulped. I had suddenly got it. Holmes stood up swiftly.

“We shall depart for the moment”, he said. “But we shall keep you informed of developments, madam. That I promise.”

“Thank you”, she smiled.

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I was still digesting what had happened when Holmes took me to Mr. van Tromp's room and asked that we be taken to see Miss King. 

I have to say that the potential princess did not impress me much. I know that royalty cannot always be beautiful but this woman had a sulky air of consequence which would have marred much more attractive features than hers. Holmes sat opposite her and placed a copy of the court photograph in front of her and her lawyer, a smarmy looking fellow whom I immediately liked even less.

“What is this?” the lawyer demanded.

“Proof that your client is about as royal as I myself‡”, Holmes said firmly. 

“A photograph!” Miss King scoffed. “What does that show?”

Holmes fixed her with one of his looks and she visibly quailed. I would have too, had it been directed at me.

“Your lawyer is fully entitled to have this particular photograph checked”, he said calmly, “but he will find that there has been no tampering with it. The original was published in a newspaper at the time, a copy of which is still available in the town library. I would draw your attention to the charming lady to the immediate right of the king as we look at things. Mrs. Maria Barton.”

“My mother”, the girl said.

“Your aunt!” Holmes corrected.

“You lie!” she hissed, although I saw that she had gone red. Mr. van Tromp gasped.

“There are four other photographs of your mother”, Holmes said quietly, “and you will note that in each she was holding something in her left hand. Hardly surprising, as she is left-handed. But the lady standing next to the king in the court photograph, a photograph that can be dated to within days of your conception, is holding her bag on her _right_ arm.”

So that was why the aunt had come over and not the mother, because the aunt was the mother and.... I knew what I meant.

“So?” the lawyer said archly. “People’s arms do get tired, sir.”

“Maybe”, Holmes said, “but that set me investigating your family Miss King, and I noticed a further inconsistency. Your lawyer will need a magnifying glass like the one I myself used, but I would draw your attention to the left shoulder of the lady who is engaging the king's very ardent admiration. Not so much the shoulder itself but what is _not_ on it. We have other pictures of the lady that we know to be Mrs. Barton along with her husband, and they all show a small but very definite mole on that shoulder – yet most mysteriously the mole has disappeared in this picture. That lady is in fact Mrs. Smith, the lady currently saying in this country – your _real_ mother, Miss King.”

She stared at him, and I wondered if she was going to try to hit him.

“Let us therefore reconstruct what actually happened around the time of your conception”, Holmes said calmly. “Mrs. Barton caught the eye of the king even though she was married; to its discredit royalty rarely lets such trifling matters come into consideration. I do not know precisely what happened next but the details are not important, save to say that she proceeded to do something that drew the attention of the authorities and which made her swift departure from the country highly desirable. However the Dutch Crown is not an absolute monarchy and getting her away would likely have proven difficult if not impossible.”

“The king was certainly in on the ramp because he played a major part in what followed. Mrs. Barton and Mrs. Smith swapped identities – they were similar enough in appearance to do this – and Mrs. Barton left the country on her sister Mrs. Smith's passport which she then mailed back to her. The police had no reason to stop Mrs. Smith from leaving the country, after all. The plan was that, to allay suspicion, the king would pay court to your aunt for a short time and then the latter would resume her _persona_ , Mrs. Barton having seemingly slipped out of the country undetected.”

“Unfortunately the best-laid plans went wrong because of the king's fecundity. Mrs. Barton had become pregnant with his child and when Mrs. Smith followed her home on her returned passport a few months later, she found that out. Mr. Barton, finally tiring of his wife's infidelities, had already initiated divorce proceedings.”

“It was the dates that gave you away which, reluctantly, Mrs. Barton has confirmed today in response to a telegram that I sent her. She arrived home in September and discovered her pregnancy three months later. Mrs. Smith arrived home in January. Mrs. Barton gave birth in May – the child sadly died – and Mrs. Smith, your real mother, gave birth to you in August. Unless the king is somehow capable of engendering elephantine pregnancies for his offspring you are clearly the daughter of Mrs. Smith, who was at least moral enough not to allow the pretence to continue into the royal bedchamber. That is why she came here instead of her sister; to support her own blood little though you deserved it.”

“Naturally when you reached sixteen you were told of your convoluted background, and being the villain that you are you saw in it an excellent chance to exploit it to your own, shameful ends. You could claim to be royal and your mother could not expose you without risking the ruination of her husband's business. It was only your foolhardy killing of Mr. Leewarden that pre-empted your vile schemes and forced you to declare your hand early, not to obtain money but to save your wretched life.”

She broke down in tears but Holmes was unmoved. As was I.

“Now”, he said firmly, “we have to deal.”

She looked up at him, hope in her eyes.

“I frankly consider you the lowest of the low”, he told her, “but needs must. Your pushing this story will hurt your aunt and your mother, neither of whom deserve to be associated with the likes of you. Most likely your uncle's business will be damaged if not ruined, and I must weigh the livelihoods of the innocent people affected by that. Also you are a United States citizen and that country, like my own, protects its people regardless. But it is also very strong when it comes to delivering justice.”

He stood up and went to the door. Opening it he admitted a sharply-dressed young blond gentleman in an expensive-looking brown suit. He was very visibly armed.

“This is Mr. Sidney Freeman”, Holmes said, “from the United States Embassy. He will be escorting you back to your homeland, madam – but do not think that you will evade paying for your crimes. The price of your extradition is that President Hayes will write a formal letter guaranteeing the Dutch government that you will spend the rest of your natural life behind bars.”

“No!” she protested.

“I should also point out that Mr. Freeman's weapon is loaded and ready to fire”, Holmes said sharply. “Should you be foolish enough to attempt to escape at any point in the journey he is instructed to shoot you dead rather than risk your evading justice. In light of your behaviour thus far in your wretched life, perhaps that might be for the best. Come Watson!”

He swept from the room and I scurried after him, leaving a crying woman behind us.

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“Doubtless you think me foolish for having done such a thing”, he said later that evening as we sat in my room. “But as I said, I had to consider not just the diplomatic side of things but also Mrs. Smith and her husband, as well as the girl's mother. None of them deserve to be associated with someone of such low moral standing yet they would be socially and even financially damaged if the case against her had gone forward.”

He looked so depressed that I felt for him. 

“Are we headed for home now?” I asked wishing to change the subject. He looked shiftily at me.

“Ah.”

_Ah?_

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Postscriptum: King William the Third (the second Third) died in 1890, three years after this story was set. His then ten-year-old daughter Wilhelmina succeeded him as queen and still rules there today (1936). The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg whose Salic laws meant that it could not be inherited by a woman passed to William's uncle the seventy-three-year-old Adolphe of Nassau; his grand-daughter Charlotte (born 1896) is the current Grand Duchess.

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_Notes:_  
_† A former Duchy which had been part of the German Confederation, but became part of the United Provinces after the Napoleonic Wars. It was divided between Belgium and the Netherlands after the former gained independence in 1839, which is why both countries have a Limburg province today._  
_‡ In fact Holmes was much more royal, as through his real father Lord Sheridan Hawke he was a great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson of King Charles the Second. Any comparisons between the consulting detective and that merriest of monarchs when it came to ladies are..... ahem, let us move on._

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	5. Case 129: The Adventure Of The Frightful Frankfurter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1887\. Those in power will oftentimes do anything – or anyone – to hold on to that power. But when they make the mistake of upsetting a certain consulting detective over his best friend.... that, my friends, is unwise!

_[Narration by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire]_

The bothersome business with the Dutch 'princess' barely interested me, as I had a much more pressing problem to attend to. Watson. He clearly expected us to have to return to England sooner rather than later and to add to my troubles he had taken a dislike to Amsterdam for some reason, so I said that we would be leaving the following morning. 

But when I came down to breakfast (there was bacon but that was not necessarily why I was there within seconds of the place opening), who should be there but my cousin Luke.

“Your mother sent me to check up on you”, he said cheerfully as if that would somehow make me feel better (I supposed that at least he had not brought me any of her stories to read, which was one small mercy). “Plus Randall had a few things that he wanted sorting in the area and was whining that you were Not Doing Your Patriotic Duty in rushing to help him every time he called.”

“Children and unpleasant lounge-lizards should not always be given what they want”, I said a little sententiously, ordering the largest breakfast that they had and ignoring some overly judgemental sort-of relative's eye-roll. “No matter how much they whine.”

At that moment I caught sight of Watson approaching, looking as handsome as ever. He saw Luke and his face fell; I could all too easily guess his thoughts and he moved to order his own breakfast at the counter. He had seen my cousin only once before but he clearly feared the worst from his presence.

“Now that I have seen that you are _both_ all right”, Luke smiled, “I can adjourn to the delights of this city such as they are. You know that your mother considers him one of the family already. She has ever written a story about your travel in Foreign Parts; 'The Honeymooners'!”

I was horrified!

“If you tell me about it I shall disown you!” I hissed. “Or I shall telegraph Benji and ask him to give you another quadruple session!”

“Already had one!” he grinned. “Why do you think I sat down so damn carefully? And I will be timing my arrival back to just after Margaret's christening; you know how he is with formal crap like that, needing to work out all his angst on some handy government functionary!”

The horny bastard left me, smirking far more than any true gentleman ever should have done. I made a mental note to find a certain type of shop in this town before I left and make sure that they shipped a large number of 'supplies' to Benji; that would wipe the smirk of my cousin's face. I could not stand people who smirked too much!

Watson came up holding his plate, looking glum.

“Luke is concerned about me”, I said, looking at him with no particular expression. He sighed and handed over two of his four rashers and I smiled at him. It was just like being back home.

“I suppose that he wants you back in England”, he said sourly. “Oh well, it was a good run while it lasted.”

I shook my head.

“I made it quite clear to all my family that I was on holiday from now on”, he said firmly. “Luke was ordered to check up on me by Mother, who is presumably panicking that so many Holmeses are out of England at one and the same time.”

Watson nodded and sighed.

“I shall have to return soon though”, he said. “The surgery did not give me that long away from my few remaining patients and surely the fuss over that dreadful woman has died down by......”

He stopped and looked sharply at me. He may have been destined to never be a detective but he was becoming far too good at reading me. I blushed slightly.

“That was the other thing”, I said looking at him nervously. “I may have arranged to borrow you from them for a little longer, say a few months. I thought that a break would do us both good.”

There was a definite quivering of the lower lip, and he looked at me as if I was the most wonderful man on earth. And even more importantly, he gave me the rest of his bacon!

I was so damn lucky!

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After I had done my shopping and wired Benji to alert him as to what was to come (Luke, until he broke), we departed. We called first at Düsseldorf, which I remembered Watson had once mentioned as having links to the Royal Family†, then at Cologne and spent a few days in that city, Watson particularly liking the great cathedral. We then went a little out of our way to see Aachen, another place that my friend had spoken of admiringly (I did pay attention _sometimes)_.

Back on the main line we next saw Bonn, a small town which was less interesting but worth a day's exploring, followed by Coblenz which was a most charming place where we spent a couple of days just walking around. I was enjoying myself especially as I could see Watson beginning to relax into our holiday. It was so nice not to have to worry about any cases; Luke had passed onto Randall that nothing short of a major war should be allowed to intrude into our sojourn or Mother might well be getting some rather interesting telegrams from Germany concerning him and the teenage daughter of a temperamental nobleman who was rather prominent in the House of Lords and was also an excellent shot. My cousin had also reproved me for those 'supplies'; he had had to take two days off work as sitting down had not been an option! Yes, everything was wonderful!

I had decided not to stop at Mainz as, although it was worth half a day exploring, I planned to take in as part of a river cruise along the River Main from Frankfurt. We therefore continued to Frankfurt-on-Main which had, until the 1866 Prussian takeover that created the German Empire, been a free city that had more or less run its own affairs. I had arranged at least four days here as there was a lot to see and I knew that Watson was looking forward to it. I had an even bigger and better surprise some way further along our trip but it was so good to see him happy right now.

I am fortunate in that while I have never studied any foreign language to a great degree, I am able to pick up the gist of written if not spoken words quite quickly. This served me well when, on our second morning there, I tried myself out on a local newspaper called rather oddly 'Der Maschine Bauch' (literally 'The Belly Machine'; I so did not want to know!). The main article was about the mayoral election later that week and it was all too clear that the writer did not think much of one of the candidates both of whom, notably, were ladies. 

Then my stomach plummeted so fast that it nearly hit the floor. In a smaller article on the right of the front page there was Watson's name! Ye Gods, we had only arrived in the place yesterday and they were already on to him. Worse still, there was also the name 'Mrs. Holden' (Holden had been the name of the accursed Mrs. Beddowes-Griffin's first husband), so even though I could not understand every word I soon had the gist of the article. This was dreadful!

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I had one piece of luck that morning apart from the obvious fact that my friend would have no interest in a German newspaper. We arrived at the cathedral to find that they did tours in English, lasting some two hours. I suggested to Watson that I might meet him when it was done, and was thus able to slip away to the British consulate and seek out someone who could fully translate the dreadful article for me. They were able to provide me with an affable young fellow called Mr. Andrew Knight who was most helpful.

“I can tell you how they knew so fast, sir”, he said. “The company that owns this rag publishes newspapers the length of the Rhine Valley, so one of their contacts must have bribed a member of your hotel staff somewhere you stayed to find out where you were headed.”

“What about the article?” I asked anxiously.

“Clever innuendo without ever actually saying anything”, he said. “All ifs, buts and maybes. I take it that the good doctor cannot read German?”

“No”, I fretted, “but as a doctor he can read people. He will soon notice if they start reacting to him in an odd way. What is wrong with these people that they have to publish trash like this, and on the front page!”

“I am frankly surprised that they bothered to cover it at all, if truth be told”, he said. “They are all up in arms over the election this week, and are devoting all their column inches to that.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Mayor Merkel has served three terms already and is a great favourite of the paper's owners”, he explained. “But she is bitterly unpopular because of her bad management of the city in recent years and she faces a strong challenge this Friday. I would have expected her journalistic allies to devote every inch of coverage they had to saving her.”

“Who is her opponent?” I asked.

“Another lady, a Frau Fischer”, he said, “which is unusual. A councillor and in my opinion a far better human being than the mayor, not that that is hard. But she will lose.”

“How can you know that?” I asked. He smiled sourly and gestured to the offending newspaper.

“The 'Embee' will, by an _amazing_ coincidence, discover some major scandal about her that they will get out on the very day of the election”, he said. “That was how 'Mucky Mukki' dealt with her last opponent, whose financial malpractice was uncovered the day before the vote. Are you going to take action against the newspaper on your friend's behalf?”

I must have had some sort of reaction to that because he actually took a step back from me, visibly alarmed.

“I am most _definitely_ going to take action!” I said firmly.

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Mr. Knight was able to 'loan' me the consulate's English speaking lawyer who, my having apprised him of what had happened, swiftly dispatched a letter to the newspaper advising them that any further allegations against Watson would result in very costly legal proceedings being initiated, and that the British government itself might be inclined to get involved. With Berlin then looking to drive Great Britain and France apart, any annoying of our Nation would definitely not have been in their interests. I was still greatly relieved however when the following day came and Watson's name was not in the paper; the helpful Mr. Knight assigned some of his staff to check thoroughly but there was no mention even on the inside pages. My friend was safe.

I was still mad, though.

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As its full name suggests the city of Frankfurt lies on the River Main, just over ten miles from where it flows into the Rhine at Mainz. As I said earlier, I had arranged for us to take a trip to the latter town by boat knowing that Watson would find the flat calm of the German rivers much more to his liking than some of our choppy sea-crossings. The way he kept looking around at all the sights like an excited schoolboy on his first major trip out was ado... charming. When he insisted on finding a restaurant in Mainz that served bacon - _speck_ was one of the few German words that he had picked up - I could only smile at having such a wonderful friend.

Our hotel back in Frankfurt had a small museum next to it that, surprisingly, was still open on our late return to the town. As we had a full last day tomorrow that would include moving to our next stop Watson asked if he could see it now; I was hungry but thought that I would have to go as surely he would be lost with all the German signs. Fortunately the place had all its signs in English as well so I was able to head to dinner. He knew that it would be bacon (or as he put it, _speck-again)_ but there was a definite smile as we parted.

Mr. Knight had agreed to meet me that evening and was able to catch me at dinner before Watson came to join me. Although he was a little surprised at my request.

“This will be very expensive”, he said. “Mainz is the nearest place and they will have to be shipped to here.”

“Expense is no object”, I said firmly. “This is for a friend.”

He looked at me a little oddly but smiled.

“Of course”, he said. “For a friend.”

I had this nagging feeling that I may have been a little more transparent in some areas that I would have liked. Thankfully Mr. Knight was kind enough not to comment on that, although the knowing smirk was.... well, I had always thought that people who smirked too much were so annoying! I had said as much to Watson more than once, and for some reason he had always seemed to find it amusing. Strange.

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The next day was the day of the election. Watson came shuffling down to breakfast yawning and I did not even have to look at him before he handed over half his bacon. He got a thankful look in return, so it was a fair deal.

“Is there no newspaper this morning?” he asked looking around. The hotel did have an English-speaking newspaper but its arrival was infrequent.

“One of the normal ones has not been able to be put out”, I explained.

He looked at me in surprise.

“Why was that?” he asked.

“It seems that some vandal visited the factory last night and applied super-strength glue to all the windows and doors”, he said. “Even to the metal gates on the way in. Still I dare say that Frankfurt can cope for one day without a solitary newspaper. I understand that what with all the excitement over the election, a Mainz newspaper is being shipped up here for those who are interested.”

We were interrupted by the noisy entrance of a red-faced besuited fellow in his fifties, who looked angrily around the room before seeing us. He strode over – I winced at the green tweed suit and virulent yellow shirt that made him look like a bloated corn-on-the-cob - and waved a newspaper at us.

 _“You_ are Mr. Sherlock Holmes!” he snapped.

“I have never denied that”, I said affably. “Have I, Watson?”

“I do not think so”, he said. “You are midway through demolishing all that bacon, so I am fairly sure that it is you.”

The brown-and-yellow fashion mistake spluttered indignantly.

“You did this!” he all but yelled. People in the room were beginning to look but he clearly did not care. “You were behind the attack on my factory and this.... this filth!”

“It looks like a newspaper to me”, I said idly. “Is there anything interesting in it?”

He really did look like he might need Watson's professional services if he got any redder. Although I doubted that he would get them, at least if I had anything to say about it.

 _Is there anything in it?_ he yelled.

“It was a not unusual question”, I said calmly. “Was there some part of it that you did not understand? I can try it in German, but I do not think that that would be very good.”

Watson coughed for no particular reason.

“These vile accusations against Frau Merkel!” the newcomer yelled. “Fraud! Theft of money destined for the poor. False expenses claims! Laws passed to help friends of hers!”

“She can always sue for slander or libel”, I said calmly. “I am sure that the laws in Germany are much the same as in England.” I paused before adding, “that is of course _if_ the allegations are untrue.”

That clearly caught him out, and he had to pause to think of a way round it.

“You know as well as I do that there are many levels of the truth in politics”, he said cagily (I thought for some reason of a certain unpleasant lounge-lizard when he came out with that). “This was deliberately done on the day of the election so that she has no time to fight back!”

“Terrible!” I agreed. “I am sure that your newspaper would _never_ have stooped to such low-grade tactics. What was your leading headline going to be today, by the way?”

He spluttered again and took some time to form an answer.

“This is your revenge for our daring to mention your friend's misdeeds!” he stormed. 

I winced. Watson however seemed unaffected by his accusation. Curious.

“Perhaps you had better go and see if you can scrape together an afternoon edition that could be got out before polls close”, I suggested. “I do not know Frau Merkel but I doubt she is the sort to forgive those who let her down. In England such people who do not make every effort to 'help' when asked – or demanded - by those in authority, tend not to do well in my experience.”

He spluttered again but strode off. I wondered whether he had yet found that all his printing ink had been rendered useless by the application of a mild alkali, then looked across curiously at Watson.

“I knew”, he said.

I stared at him in shock.

“How?” I demanded. “You do not speak a word of German?”

He blushed.

“One of the maids, Helga, asked me if I was the gentleman in the newspaper and translated it for me”, he said.

“That was good of her”, I said before it suddenly hit me. “Wait a minute. She translated it for you out of the goodness of her heart?”

He blushed fiercely. Oh Lord, what had he gone and done? I would kill that bloody maid!

“She said she wanted a picture of you”, he muttered. “I promised to post her one once we got back into England.”

I did not laugh. I did not, honestly. My eyes may have watered with the effort of not laughing, though.

“Shut up!” he hissed. But he was smiling as he said it. And he passed me the rest of his bacon, which was sort of appreciated.

I did not drool either!

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Postscriptum: Frau Merkel lost her re-election bid by nearly two to one. I later learned that the irate newspaper owner at our breakfast table had had to undergo hospital treatment when he had suffered four broken ribs, a head injury, two broken arms and one broken leg. Apparently he 'fell down some stairs after a meeting'.... with Frau Merkel. Tut tut, how very clumsy of him!

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_Notes:_   
_† This city was part of the Rhine Palatinate, a once-independent land one of whose leaders, Frederick the Fifth, had married Elizabeth, sister to King Charles the First of England, Scotland and Ireland. In 1618 Frederick had unwisely tried to advance his claim to the vacant throne of Bohemia, and had lost all his lands as a result as well as plunging Europe into the terrible Thirty Years' War._

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	6. Case 130: The Adventure Of The Noble Bachelor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1887\. Watson's relationship with Holmes continues to evolve as the detective once again showshe has a great heart to match his great mind. And Death's man dies a death – or does he?

_[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D.]_

We left Frankfurt after our little 'adventure' there – Holmes most obligingly arranged with the hotel photographer for Helga (our maid) to have her picture taken with him, as well as promising a signed photograph for her once we got back to England, although the simpering look that she spent the whole time giving him was frankly unbecoming of a married woman, let alone one in her forties and with four children! I felt sorry for her poor husband who had to stand there and 'not see' it. 

Holmes wanted to spend another day in nearby Mainz and I found out why when he translated a newspaper article for me which related that our last stopping-place now had a new lady mayor, who had defeated her predecessor in a surprise victory. We may or may not have called in on a certain restaurant that served bacon to celebrate Holmes's role in that (we did).

From Mainz we proceeded to Worms, made famous by Martin Luther and his famous protest against papal misrule. Mannheim was a pleasant enough place, but our next stop at the pretty little town of Heidelberg took my breath away as the place had what my brother Stevie would have called a 'chocolate-box' quaintness. It was certainly far superior to our next stop at Karlsruhe, which I had wanted to see as I had read how it had inspired the famous Thomas Jefferson to design the American capital, Washington D.C. Sadly the German town did not inspire me in the least.

Holmes asked if I might wish to visit Strasbourg, but I held the view that this city, then part of the German Empire, had been wrongfully wrested from the French in the recent Franco-German Wars and declined. We therefore took a slower train south, and I wondered just where we would end up next.

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I stared incredulously at the station name-board, until my friend nudged me to move away from the train before it started off again. 

“You.... you brought me here?” I asked trying to pull myself together. Holmes smiled, I think; my eyes were unaccountably watering for some reason.

“You said more than once how much you wanted to come here”, he said. “So I thought, why not? We have a week in Baden-Baden's Grand Hotel, plenty of time to visit the spa and do some sight-seeing.”

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As I have so often said, when good things did happen to me I just _knew_ that Fate had something bad in store ready and waiting to balance the books. But even I had not anticipated as to just how fast that balancing would get me this time. We were checking into the hotel – the main English-speaking one in the town, Holmes had assured me – when the concierge looked at our names in the register with something approaching awe. She was an elderly lady, her grey hair curled tightly into a bun but she looked as if all her Christmases had come at once. Far too many ladies looked at Holmes like that for reasons that I could never fathom, but it was still damnably annoying. Almost as annoying as the knowing smirk that I could detect forming on my friend's face.

“Excuse me, sir”, she said, “but if that is Doctor Watson are you _the_ Mr. Sherlock Holmes?”

I had always longed for my friend to turn around one day and say, “no, I am Mr. Sherlock Holmes the drains and sewage specialist”, but my friend only smiled.

“It is a rare name”, he said, “and if you mean 'am I the Mr. Sherlock Holmes who is also a consulting detective', then yes I am.”

“Could you please wait here just a moment?” she said almost running into a back room before either of us could answer.

“You seem to have already acquired a fan club”, I observed. He smiled back at me.

“Hopefully nothing that will disturb our holiday”, he said. 

That hope was not to be realized.

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The concierge returned and asked us if we could spare a few minutes to talk with the hotel manager, to which we agreed. Mr. Ivan Coburg was I thought rather young for such a position; a tall reedy fellow in his mid-thirties, he had thinning blond hair through which he kept running his hand. He bade us both to take a seat.

“I am sorry for troubling you gentlemen on what must be a holiday”, he said apologetically, “but your arrival here is providential. The day before yesterday one of our guests died in somewhat mysterious circumstances and the local police are being very heavy-handed about the whole thing. I do not like to ask but....”

“Tell us about it”, Holmes urged.

The manager seemed to relax a little at the invitation. 

“The dead man was one Mr. Nigel Horton, valet to Lord De'Ath who is staying here”, he said. “It is all really quite bizarre; it appears that he committed suicide but..... our resident doctor thought it a little strange.”

 _Death takes a holiday_ , I thought. 

“Why did he think that?” I asked. 

“I am babbling”, he said twisting his hands nervously. “I was only appointed last month when the previous manager was found to be defrauding the company, and several people said that I was not experienced enough. The deputy manager here at the time, Monsieur Laverre, expected to get the appointment and he was.... he was less than happy at the company's decision. He has not been at all helpful over this whole sorry affair. I ran a small hotel on the Swiss border beforehand so this is a big step up for me – and now I have a death on my hands!”

He took a deep breath and pulled himself together. I belatedly noted that the glass decanter on the sideboard was three-quarters empty.

“Aubrey, Lord De'Ath and his valet Mr. Nigel Horton arrived here two days ago”, he said. “If you were to take an interest in the case, Mr. Holmes, I am certain that he would be willing to speak with you. The experience has come as a shock to him, I know. The local police have insisted that he should not leave until they have finished all their inquiries so he would surely welcome a speedy resolution.”

“Of course”, Holmes said. “Pray continue.”

“Lord De'Ath took the Royal Suite - our best - and decided to use the hotel's private pool that same night”, the manager went on. “His manservant accompanied him. They had checked in at just after seven that evening.....”

“Did you have warning of their arrival?” Holmes interrupted.

“Yes. A telegram sent the day before from Basel.”

“Pray go on.”

“They entered the pool room at just before eight”, the manager continued. “We usually close it at half-past but we try to be flexible for our guests. There was one man on duty, Paolo; he was 'on call' if they needed anything which apparently they did not. The valet approached him not long after their arrival and told him that his master wished to read quietly and perhaps swim later. Paolo remained in his room until shortly after a quarter to ten when he was alerted by Lord De'Ath knocking frantically at his door saying that his valet had collapsed while walking along the edge of the pool and had fallen in. He had tried to get him out but the man was too heavy for him to lift on his own. Paolo helped him drag the man out but he had apparently drowned.”

 _“Apparently_ drowned?” I asked, wondering just how one 'apparently' drowned. The manager nodded.

“Our doctor did an initial examination and found a small puncture wound in the arm”, he said. “Lord De'Ath, very reluctantly I have to say, admitted that he had lately entertained suspicions that his valet had started to partake of the evil opium, and several additional marks found on the body seemed to back this up.”

Holmes nodded and looked expectantly at the manager.

“I think that that is all, sir”, the man said, looking surprised. “Do you think that you might be able to take the case?”

“Only if you tell me everything, Mr. Coburg”, Holmes said.

“But sir....”

“No, you have left something out.”

“I assure you, I have not.”

“What else did the doctor say?” Holmes pressed.

The manager looked confused for a moment then his face cleared.

“Oh, that?” he said. “That was nothing.”

“He commented on the stiffness of the dead man's limbs, did he not?”

The manager stared at Holmes in amazement.

“How.... how on earth could you have known that?” he almost shrieked (I wondered too).

“It is my business to know things, sir”, Holmes said crisply. “Indeed I am fairly sure that I already know exactly how this death occurred. I will however need to do a few things before I can be absolutely certain. For any subsequent court case, you understand.”

The manager was looking at him like he was the Second Coming. If there was a simper, I was checking us both out!

“Name them!” he said.

“I shall need to dispatch a telegram to my policeman friend in London”, Holmes said. “Then after the doctor and I have seen the body of the dead man and Watson has examined him, I think it only fair that I have a talk with the current occupant of your Royal Suite.”

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The dead man had been in his late forties and in good physical condition, I thought. The local doctor had been right about the number of pinpricks on his arm although he seemed to have applied some sort of unguent in an attempt to hide them and I estimated that his use of the evil drug must have started only recently. 

_(This seems a timely place for an aside concerning the malicious rumours, doubtless started by some of Holmes's many enemies, that he himself partook of the dreaded opium and which falsehoods plagued the years after our return to England as if we did not have enough to worry about then. As a doctor I would have immediately spotted any symptoms and have treated my friend for them. I can only assume that among the many people upon whom my friend wrought justice one – or a relation of one – had a journalistic connection, for this evil rumour appeared more than once in the newspapers until Lady Holmes heard about it. She went round to the offices of the last newspaper to publish the allegations and the stories stopped. The newspaper was however able to resume publication once all its staff had been released from hospital; I suppose they should have been grateful that she did not visit them there and read them some of her stories while they were incapacitated and Lord help me if I am not getting another disapproving look as I write this!)_

“I find the unguent a bit odd”, I remarked as I finished up.

“How so?” Holmes asked.

“What was the point of it?” I asked. “His uniform would surely cover the marks; he would have no cause to go about his work bare-sleeved. Unless he was afraid that other servants might see them when he was changing but then that would not have been an issue with him and his master travelling alone.”

“A good point”, he said. “I do not however think that the dead man took opium, or any form of drugs. I believe that those marks and that unguent were a blind designed to mislead us. 

“He was very well-kempt”, I observed. 

“Many people rightly judge the nobility on how their servants are turned out”, he said. “A poorly-presented servant usually means a bad master. Is there anything else?”

I was about to say no when I spotted it. I had thought it to be just a birthmark but a second look convinced me otherwise. It was a tattoo transfer and quite recently applied. 

“An eight, I think”, I said. “Odd. It has been done quite recently as these wear off after only a few days at most. The discolouration of the skin around it might even make me think it had been done after death, although that is impossible. Perhaps he applied it when he got here for some reason.”

Holmes looked at the mark too.

“The sign of infinity”, he said, “an eight on its side. Used by some criminal groups to mark either members or victims. This case grows darker, my friend. Let us go and wait on our fellow Englishman.”

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I did not quite know what to expect of Aubrey, Lord De'Ath but whatever it had been he was definitely not it. Like his late valet he was a tallish fellow in his late forties, with badly-dyed black hair and wearing an ill-fitting dressing-gown. He also wore those tinted glasses which were meant to be beneficial for certain sight conditions. I knew that the English nobility was famed for being eccentric but this was pushing it!

I expected Holmes to get straight down to questioning him so of course he surprised me.

“What a wonderful walking-stick!” he exclaimed, perusing a silver-topped stick propped up against the table. “Though surely a little impractical?”

“How so, sir?” the nobleman asked, clearly as surprised as I was.

“Pure silver is a soft metal”, Holmes explained, “not really suitable for the knocks and scrape such an item must get in its daily wear. I can see that this is the very highest quality, judging from the Birmingham hallmark. Ah well, let us get down to the tragic business at hand.”

The man looked decidedly uncomfortable.

“Yes”, he said with visible reluctance. “I am afraid that this may be at least partly my fault.”

“How so?” Holmes asked. 

The nobleman sat back.

“Three years ago I had to put the family home, Kesteven Hall, up for auction....”

Holmes exclaimed in surprise.

“I _knew_ that I had seen the name somewhere!” he said. “The De'Aths, descendants of the Burghleys! Your house is in Rutlandshire.”

The man looked visibly astonished.

“Sir?”

Holmes turned to me.

“Just before we met that second time at Cambridge I had a small matter for a family who lived in Uppingham”, he explained. “Elizabethan history always fascinated me so I took the chance to cross into Northamptonshire and see Burghley House, home to Queen Elizabeth I's famous advisor William Cecil. They told me how he once had a major falling out with his second son and threatened to disinherit him, only for James Cecil to buy a plot of land directly opposite his father's house and build what became Kesteven House there. Because it was in the county of Rutlandshire which was protected by some old Saxon law or other his father could not touch him.”

I thought that whole outburst rather odd, even by my friend's standards. Holmes had hardly ever shown any interest in history except where he had needed to know of it for a case, and then he usually came to me. He turned back to the nobleman.

“So you must be a Cecil then?”

The fellow nodded.

“Only by bastard descent, I am afraid”, he said, “although I inherited the house when the legitimate line was exhausted. What with taxes and land being what it is, times have been very hard of late. I sold the place and used the money to set myself up quite comfortably in London. I did not want any of the servants I had had there – too many reminders of the past although I saw them into new positions all right – so I advertised for a new valet. I saw three other fellows before I found Nigel who is - was wonderful at his job. He did everything around the house including cooking and cleaning.”

“How did you come to get him?” Holmes asked.

“Wallace – Lord Withermore, who passed recently – recommended him to me when he went abroad last year”, the nobleman said. “He knew what he had was fatal and..... it is probably bad of me to day it, but he did not trust his son to look after his servants as he had asked. Nigel was brilliant, and I had no problems with him like so many men do with a new valet. Until this trip.”

“What happened?” Holmes asked. The nobleman hesitated.

“I originally planned to visit the South of France”, he said. “I know how some people are about foreign travel so I offered to have someone else for the trip but Nigel said that he was fine. Then a friend telegraphed me while I was in Marseilles and said that he could put me up at a Swiss hotel that he had a share in, and I could then go on to take in this place which has always appealed to me. But when I told Nigel that that meant we would be going home through Germany, he went quite pale. He assured me that it was nothing but he was on edge the whole trip, and got worse once we had crossed the border near here.”

“Do you know if he had any German connections?” Holmes asked. 

“I believe that there is some German blood somewhere in his family but he did not talk about his past”, the nobleman said. “Given the state of Anglo-German relations over recent years I could understand his reluctance to talk about them. Politics has never interested me unlike my famous ancestor, I am afraid; I prefer to value people rather than their ancestors.”

I thought instinctively of my traitorous grandfather. This fellow's attitude was a rare one, unfortunately.

“Tell us what happened last night”, Holmes said.

“We got here around seven and I signed the book”, the nobleman said, frowning as he remembered. “Nigel was tense all the way from the station so I decided that once we had got to our rooms, I would allow him some time to himself and myself explore the hotel pool.”

“You were very attached to him”, Holmes observed.

“What makes you say that?” the nobleman asked, surprised.

“Few men refer to their valets by their first names”, Holmes observed. “Did you know that he took opium?”

The nobleman frowned.

“I had suspected that he had started so doing”, he admitted, “but there are worse vices, Mr. Holmes. He insisted on accompanying me to the pool – I am not a strong swimmer although I can manage - and I had not the heart to refuse him.”

Holmes thought for some little time before his next question.

“Did you leave him alone in your room between arriving and going to the pool room?” he asked.

“Of course”, the nobleman said. “He had to go to his own room and leave his things there. But he was not gone long, no more than a minute as the room adjoined mine.”

I noted the defensive tone in his voice.

“What happened in the pool room?” Holmes said.

“I sat by the pool and read my book”, the nobleman said, “and Nigel read his. He was very learnéd for a servant, Mr. Holmes, and was working his way through the Greek tragedies. After about an hour or so I decided to swim a few lengths. Then I rested, read a little, then swam some more. I recall that Nigel went and told the attendant – Paul, I think his name was – that I was not to be disturbed as he did not approach us.”

He hesitated before continuing.

“I do not know the exact time that it happened – I must have been there a couple of hours, maybe a little less - but I was swimming at the far end of the pool when I heard a splash. I assumed that Nigel had slipped and fallen in so I stood up – I was at the shallow end – and waited for him to resurface. When he did not I got out and ran round to where he was floating face down, but he was too heavy for me to move so I had to be content with turning him over and then hurrying to fetch the assistant to help me. We were able to pull him out between us but it was too late.”

Holmes nodded and produced a notebook from his pocket.

“Does this symbol mean anything to you?” he asked showing the nobleman the infinity sign that we had seen on the dead man's body.

I was not expecting a reaction so was more than a little surprised when the nobleman leaped out of his chair.

“Where did you find that?” he asked, his voice trembling.

“I think that there is something that you neglected to tell us”, Holmes said gently. Lord De'Ath sighed.

“That was written on the notepad in my room when we got to it”, he said, “and it seemed to startle Nigel for some reason. I did not think much on it but when I went back to the room after it was all over, the sheet with it on had been removed by someone although there was no sign of the room having been broken into.”

“It may be the symbol of a criminal group that is responsible for the man's death”, Holmes said. “I have wired to London for certain information, and once that arrives I should be able to reach a conclusion. What are _your_ plans sir, may I ask?”

The nobleman sighed heavily.

“I really do not wish to stay here”, he said, “but the local police have 'strongly suggested' that I do. For a few days at least.”

“Then let us hope that we can clear things up for you”, Holmes smiled, “and speed you on your way.”

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We were assigned the Alpine Suite which I later learned was the second-best that the hotel had to offer. It was far more than I could ever have afforded but since Holmes was doing the hotel a favour by looking into their case I supposed that it was fair enough. It consisted of one large room with three bedrooms off it.

“I thought that you had the case all wrapped up?” I asked curiously as we got ready for bed. Holmes yawned.

“I have a distinct feeling that the local police will want more in the way of evidence than 'Mr. Sherlock Holmes thinks'”, he said. “Hopefully though, if LeStrade can provide me with what I asked for, then that should be sufficient.”

“What did you ask for?” I asked, slipping under my covers.

“The criminal record of one Mr. Nigel Oliver Horton, Esquire”, he said, heading off to his room.

“You believe that there is something in his past which led to the murder?” I asked.

“Yes and no”, he said over his shoulder.

I scowled at his retreating back. Through which I could still see that damn smirk! Harrumph!

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The following day myself, Holmes, Lord De'Ath and Mr. Coburg assembled in the latter's small office. It was rather crowded as also present was the town's English-speaking policeman, Herr Franker. He was short, stout and a little out of breath from having had to hurry from the station.

“What is all the rush for?” he demanded, clearly annoyed. “Has something new come up in the case?”

“I thought that you would like to meet the murderer of the man whose body currently lies down at your station”, Holmes said calmly. “Of course if you would rather not....”

The policeman looked suspiciously at him.

“Where is he?” he demanded.

“I confidently expect him to be in this room at ten o' clock”, Holmes said.

We all looked as one at the small clock on the writing-desk which said that there was barely a minute to go until the hour. Then we all looked at each other nervously. Never have I known sixty seconds to take so long but with just a few seconds to go a figure loomed outside the frosted glass door-window. I tensed and my hand tightened around the gun that Holmes had advised me to have ready. The door opened and.....

It was Will, one of the bell-boys. Everyone visibly deflated.

 _“Him?”_ the policeman said incredulously.

Holmes smiled and shook his head, then took the proffered telegram from the boy. After quickly reading it he tipped him (too generously as per usual) and said “no reply”.

“Was that the information you wanted?” I asked eagerly. He nodded. 

“Yes”, he said turning to the policeman. “I said that I would have a murderer in this room by ten, did I not?”

“Er, yes sir....”

“Then kindly do your duty and arrest him.”

“Arrest who?” the policeman asked bewilderedly.

Holmes gestured to our fellow Englishman.

“That man”, he said. “Mr. Nigel Oliver Horton, who has been masquerading as the man he killed the night of his arrival here, Aubrey, Lord De'Ath. By the way 'my lord', the doctor's gun is currently trained on you so I strongly advise you not to attempt anything foolish.”

The policeman moved fast and had the valet cuffed before dragging him to the doorway.

“Wait a damn minute!” Mr. Horton snapped. “How the hell did you guess?”

Holmes smiled. 

“I did not 'guess'”, he said. “Several small things gave you away, sir. I recalled a comment Watson here once made about the wrong person being murdered one time in a case in Surrey and thought to myself; how much more fitting that the rich lord be killed than the poor valet. In which case the poor valet who would subsequently masquerade as the rich lord had to be the killer. It is dark at the check-in desk and the clerk on duty would likely not even notice a servant standing back in the gloom. You decided to have your employer killed and out of the way long before anyone else had had a chance to compare the two of you.”

“I set a trap for you at our meeting yesterday. Guessing that you had only recently come into your master's employment I lied about Kesteven Hall and the Cecils. I made the whole thing up to see if you would accept it, and accept it you did.”

 _That explained my friend's sudden historical interest_ , I thought. The man snarled at him.

“Then there was the silver stick”, Holmes said. “Fine silver is polished by the thumbs of a manservant and despite your attempts to remove them your thumbs bore the faint but unmistakeable marks of cleaning your master's silver, including that stick. The real Lord De'Ath would never have cleaned his own silver.”

Holmes turned to the manager.

“That was also the reason for my comment about your doctor's sage remarks”, he explained. “This is what actually happened. Mr. Horton kills his employer shortly after their arrival at the pool, by poisoning his drink. He makes a point of telling the attendant that the gentleman who was apparently napping did not wish to be disturbed. He then does what he told us his master did, namely he swims and reads. About two hours later he swaps the clothes and lowers his master into the pool, then calls for help. Hence why the body was stiff; the doctor was not asked 'how long has this man been dead?', but was told that the attendant had seen him alive around ten o' clock and _then_ asked for the time of death. He naturally assumed that he must have died after ten - but he still commented on the stiff limbs.”

“You think you're so smart”, Mr. Horton snapped. “It is just your word and some flimsy evidence, Mr. Holmes!”

“That and your eyes”, Holmes shot back.

“What?” the valet asked. Holmes turned to me.

“LeStrade sent me full descriptions of both Lord De'Ath and Nigel Horton”, he explained. “Lord De'Ath had pale blue eyes which ran in his family while Mr. Horton's are brown.” He turned back to the valet. “Your unusual choice of glasses alerted me to that possibility, sir.”

The man growled again and the policeman hustled him away. The manager turned to Holmes in gratitude.

“It goes without saying that your stay here will be free, sir”, he said. “We would like to upgrade you to the best room we have.”

To my surprise Holmes shook his head.

“I think we will stay where we are, thank you”, he said knowingly. “I do not think either the doctor or myself would relish using the Royal Suite just now.”

He had a point. A murderer's room.... ugh!

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	7. Interlude: The G-word

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1887\. Someone is unwise enough to use the wrong word to the most inimitable (cough!) authoress in the British Empire.

_[Narration by Lady Aelfrida Holmes]_

I was Irked (what dear Anna would call a Level Two), as what should have been a most enjoyable morning had been upset by that idiot son of mine. Torver seemed to have convinced himself that identifying as Ozymandias, King of Kings might in some way have saved him from my wrath. Surely even someone as stupid as that waste of space should have realized just how wrong that was?

Oh well, he would have a week or so in a hospital bed to get it.

Dear Chuckie came in, looking a little pale I thought. It seemed that the drops proscribed by that lovely Doctor Greenwood were not working as well as I had hoped, so he would be unable to hear my wonderful stories any time soon as, the doctor had said, they generated far too much stress on his delicate hearing. Thankfully at least he was not banned from The Other, or I would have started to seriously doubt the scrummy medic.

“Torver?” Chuckie sighed.

“Hospital”, I said firmly. “There was I feeling so pleased at dear Anna having produced a third son – and even better, naming the boy Orlando after that memorable work I did regarding the leprechaun who granted wishes concerning young men's manhoods – and our own son mentions That Dreadful Word!”

Chuckie nodded sympathetically. He knew that I Did Not Like the word that started with the seventh letter of the alphabet and rhymed with 'cranny'... ugh, even mentally going anywhere near it made me shudder! At least Torver would not be so annoying any time soon, as I had caught him squarely on the jaw.

“Perhaps a fitting use of his time would be to make him edit 'Somewhere Over The Rainbow'?” Chuckie suggested. “You did day that you were considering a sequel. He could come up with some ideas once he has made notes on the original. One of your most impressive stories, from what you said about it.”

I did not preen, as ladies do not do that sort of thing. I merely _glowed._

“Very true”, I agreed. “And Torver needs something to pass all those hours in hospital, otherwise he will be even more useless than usual. I will take it round to him later.”

He smiled and left. He was quite useful for good ideas, and for The Other of course. In the meantime I had to write to Lucifer and ask him about my sweet little Sherry-werry. And his own Black Beauty of course; I had heard that the fellow posed naked for art classes somewhere. Along with some of dear Campbell's other beautiful, delicious boys.

All of a sudden I fancied taking up painting as a hobby.....

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	8. Interlude: Reichenbach And Rings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1887\. After a lot of bacon and an unexpected meeting for Holmes, there is a visit to the Reichenbach Falls which proves memorable for all the wrong reasons. But there are also are rings, kisses, a balcony scene and - gulp! - Feelings!

_[Narration by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire]_

Before we left Baden-Baden and the scene of our latest adventure, I asked Watson if there was anywhere else in central Europe that he wished to see, as Randall had asked (begged) me to undertake an investigation in north-eastern Italy and I saw no reason to hurry there (it was actually his seventeenth request but this one suited my own ends and my pestilential brother could damn well dance to _my_ tune for once in his long and miserable existence!). My friend confessed to a desire to see the famous Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland, which given his acrophobia I was more than a little surprised at. But it was Watson, so of course I said yes.

As we crossed the border into Switzerland the efficient Swiss guards had our passports checked in the short time before we reached the small town of Basel. Watson remarked that he half-expected that they would detain us because someone had selfishly chosen to get murdered again at precisely the wrong moment but mercifully the town was (at that time) murder-free and we decided to spent a whole day there before moving on. 

The Gods were clearly on my side at this critical juncture in my life for of all things Basel was having a Bacon Festival that weekend, and my wonderful friend agreed to extend our day. Rather that subject him to watching me devour bacon all day I suggested that he enjoy one of the many Rhine river cruises on offer, and we agreed to meet back at the hotel later.

I may have been somewhat full as I made my way slowly back to our rooms that afternoon, to find that my friend was not yet back. I decided to enjoy a coffee in the hotel restaurant, and was only on my third(ish) cup when I realized that someone was taking the seat opposite me. Someone who was not Watson. I looked up and frowned at......

_“Sherrinford?”_

My twin grinned cheerfully at me as he sat down. He looked much the same as when I had met him in Scotland just two years back, where he had been 'helping' the village of Inverwick recover from the loss of so many of their young men in a storm. 

“What are you doing here?” I asked, shocked. “I thought that you were still.... you know.”

“I am not still 'you knowing'”, he smiled. “My work in Scotland is done, which was just as well as I had to catch you here before you do not do something smart.”

I looked at him, confused.

 _“Not_ do something smart?” I echoed.

“You are finally getting to the point where you are thinking about taking your relationship to the next level”, he said. “Enjoy all your bacon earlier?”

I involuntarily licked my lips. I was sure that I was not that messy an eater, nor was I that predic.... all right, maybe I was the latter.

“Watson wishes to see the falls at Reichenbach”, he said. “I myself cannot see the appeal of a lot of water dutifully following the laws laid down by Sir Isaac Newton, but each to their own. Something will happen while you are there and he will need you more than ever before. Much as you need him.”

“What?” I asked anxiously. “He will not be hurt, surely? He hates heights and would never go up on the walkways that I have read are there.”

He seemed to think for a moment.

“It is like a skater on thin ice”, he said at last. “If he positions his weight just right he can avoid falling through, but one wrong move and he is in for a soaking. That is what it is like being a seer. I can give you guidance at times like this, but too much information and I might lose my powers and then not have them for when you will really need them.”

I was about to ask when that might be when I stopped. He nodded.

“Your annoying brother wants you to go to Padua”, he said, standing up. “Three things to remember, brother. First, the lady who owns the balcony in Verona does not judge. Second, Watson prefers silver to gold. And third.....”

He smiled as he rose to his feet.

“Third”, he said, “as the saying goes, 'the play's the thing'!”

He nodded to me and strode off. I stared after him, wondering.

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My twin had never told me not to tell Watson of his existence, but then I could hardly do that without explaining my true parentage and that was a conversation I did not want to have any time in the next hundred years, coward that I was. I was sure that my friend knew that I was unsettled for some reason but hopefully he accepted that it was likely indigestion. Especially as they had had to cancel the last day of the Bacon Festival due to an unexpected shortage of the stuff!

We left Basel and headed to Bern, which Watson enjoyed. Then another change of trains at Spiez brought us to the charming town of Meiringen in the early evening. I had booked us in for two nights there and after my twin's words I worried as to what might befall us, or at least Watson. But he had promised it would be nothing injurious, so at least there was that.

The following day we set off for the Falls which were stunningly beautiful. I did not even think to suggest taking the high path knowing that my friend would surely better appreciate this natural beauty from the safety and solidity of the ground, and that.... what on earth?

Watson seemed to be having some sort of panic attack! Uttering a swift and silent prayer of thanks that we had come early enough to avoid the crowds, I rushed over and pulled him into an embrace. Even if there had been a thousand people in that God-forsaken valley I would not have cared; Watson needed me and that was what was important. 

Slowly his breathing steadied although he still looked absolutely terrified for some reason. Also, I was worried to note, a little ashamed of his reaction.

I was grateful for the physical strength which enabled me to bring his larger frame to a standing position and to then move him away from whatever had caused this aberration. Once we were out of sight of the Falls he seemed to improve still further although he still looked shocked. As was I.

He was still not himself as we finally attained our hotel which fortunately was but a short distance from the Falls. I led him inside and to my room and set him down on the bed.

“Would you like a drink?” I asked. He shook his head.

“C-c-cold!” he muttered. It was quite warm in the room but he clearly felt the sort of inner chill that I was sure no external heat could drive away. Until to my surprise he pulled me back into an embrace. 

This... was good. I could feel him beginning to calm down and he instinctively buried his face in my neck. The small whine that I affected not to hear was possibly the most terrible sound that I had ever heard come out of this wonderful human being.

“Do you wish to talk about it?” I asked gently.

He shook his head – not easy from his current position – but I got the message. 

“You were gone!” he cried, bursting into speech. “You left me!”

I eased back and looked at him in surprise.

“You know that I would never willingly leave you, John”, I said, realizing only as I said it that it was one of the rare times that I had called him by his Christian name. “Why would I do that?”

“You were gone!” he repeated. 

I made a swift decision.

“Would you like to leave this place?” I asked. He looked at me in surprise.

“But you have already paid for our stay here”, he protested.

“All the money I have is not worth your unhappiness”, I said and the look of gratitude that I got in return was almost too much for me. “Come. I believe that there is a train back to Spiez and they must surely have good accommodation there. Then we can head down to Italy.” 

_And away from here_ , I added silently.

He was clearly torn, wanting to leave but not wanting to let go of me. I felt him shudder again.

“There will be later trains”, I said, reaching over to ring for a timetable to be sent up. I had to get my friend away from this place.

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Watson was nervous and on edge the whole rest of the day, and he was actually shaking when I came back from a trip to the bathroom. I checked the timetable for the trains back to Spiez and selected a late afternoon one, then called a boy to take a telegram booking a room in a hotel there. Doubtless we attracted one or two unusual looks when we eventually departed as Watson was anxious not to be parted from me, but I did not care a jot.

I should perhaps have thought ahead more. Instinctively I had booked two adjoining rooms in our hotel in Spiez but Watson looked terrified when I suggested that it was time for us to turn in. Obviously I could not leave him in his current state so I suggested that we take advantage of the connecting door between our rooms and sleep in the same bed. The look of gratitude that I got for that would have melted a heart of stone.

A good night's sleep did my friend the world of good even if I experienced a brief moment of embarrassment when I woke in the morning to find that, despite my best intentions, my body had somehow wrapped itself around Watson's slightly shorter if more solid frame. But our relationship had clearly advanced to a new level now and when he woke and looked hesitatingly at me, I smiled re-assuringly at him. This was our 'new normal' and I would have been lying if I had not said that it was something that I had always wanted. In truth part of me wanted more – much, much more - but I was happy that we had got this far even if I was distraught at the way in which it had come about.

We resumed our journey, heading south to the Italian border and the town of Domodossola. This time it was Italian guards who checked our passports and papers on the train, two puffed-up young bucks who clearly thought a great deal of themselves. I was never so happy to see Watson smile as when one of them asked in broken English if he could have my autograph and I not only obliged but promised to send him a signed copy of Watson's next book if he left us his address. 

Our first experience of Italian railways was an unnerving one. The engine looked like it should have been up against Mr. Stephenson’s 'Rocket' at the Rainhill Trials half a century ago (it would probably have lost), rather than pulling a long rake of coaches through hilly countryside. I wondered if we would even make it to Milan at one point when we slowed to a snail's pace up a steep hill but somehow we scrambled over the top and almost attained a semi-decent speed coming down the other side, mostly I suspected thanks to gravity. The trip past Lake Maggiore was breathtakingly beautiful and I was relieved that a second natural beauty apparently had not affected my friend like the first had done. I wanted to know just what about the falls had triggered that reaction in my friend, but now was not the time to ask.

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Our hotel in Milan gave us both an experience to remember. As we were checking in on one side of the reception desk a stunningly beautiful young woman was doing the same just a few feet away, dressed in what was very obviously the highest fashion. I never quite understood why women reacted to me in the way that they did especially given that Watson was (and still is) far more good-looking, but then I long ago accepted that understanding the fairer sex was not something that would ever be within my or any man's compass. Frankly I found the way that this woman in particular all but draped herself over me to be quite offensive until I heard what she had to whisper in my ear. I gave her a retort in her own language which had her recoiling rather more rapidly, and I smiled at my friend before leading the way upstairs.

“What did you say to her?” he asked. I noted (but did not comment on the fact) that he was annoyed at the woman's presumption.

“She had a message from Randall”, I explained and I could see his face fall at that news. “Unfortunately she chose to deliver it a little too personally for my tastes.”

“She was very beautiful”, he offered.

“But she is not you.”

It must have been the undying gratitude in those hazel eyes that made my mouth disengage from my brain like that. Grasping the nettle I made a fateful (but ultimately correct) decision.

“I find these sort of things very tiring”, I said. “Randall is now in a complete panic over Padua where a very delicate diplomatic affair is being attended to by Guilford. He thinks that my counsel as well would be beneficial.”

“'The Taming Of The Shrew'”, he said. “Shakespeare, where a match made in Hell turned out all right in the end.”

“But first we shall visit Verona”, I said. “That is a much more appropriate setting as regards the Bard.”

“Oh”, he said. “You mean 'The Two Gentlemen Of Verona'?”

“No”, I said, inwardly sweating at what I feared his reaction might be to what I had suddenly made of my twin's advice. “I was thinking of the famous balcony scene from 'Romeo and Juliet', which is set in that town. I think that it would be an excellent place.”

“An excellent place for what?” he asked, confused. I levelled him with a look.

“For us to exchange rings”, I said softly. “I know that you do not think highly of yourself, John, and I wish for you to have a permanent reminder of just how highly I value your presence at my side. Know that I will never look at anyone else, man or woman, as long as I have you.”

The look of love – for that was what it was, little though I deserved it - which that remark elicited was so wonderful that it was almost painful. I foresaw, correctly, that our evening would involve a whole lot of manly embracing that was definitely not anything else at all, least of all something that started with the third letter of the alphabet and rhymed with huddling.

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Milan was enjoyable enough but John declined my offer of a stop in Brescia. He evidently could still not believe what I had planned and I was more than happy to prove him wrong. 

“We have an appointment”, I explained as we left the restaurant in Verona a few days later. “Just a little way along this street.”

We continued until we reached a jewellery shop. I stopped outside it and, to John's obvious surprise, took his hand. The street was quiet enough but such public declarations of affection were risky, probably more so here than back in England.

“I live a dangerous life”, I said softly, “and make far too many enemies. We both know that I am unlikely to make old bones.”

I could see how my words chilled him, and placed a gentle finger on his lips to stop him saying anything.

“Despite that you have stayed faithful to me”, I said. “Far more so that I could ever possibly deserve. I can never have the 'married with children' life that so many aspire to, nor would I ever wish for it. But I have you. I need to make you understand just how important you are to me, John, something that had I had any sense I should have done a long time ago. You are more than just a friend and it is high time that I made that as official as it can be.”

He was so embarrassed that he barely noticed that I had used his first name again. Indeed he looked so uncertain that I nearly kissed him right there in the street. Perhaps fortunately he managed to restrict himself to merely squeezing my hand and uttering a heartfelt ‘thank you!’, albeit in an unusually high-pitched voice. There was definitely some quivering of a lip in there, though.

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John must have thought that we would be returning to our hotel but instead I took us a little deeper into town while he spent much of the time fingering his new ring. Like mine it was plain silver but its mere presence on his finger had brought back that wonderful smile to his handsome face and I resolved to spend as much of my life as I could in keeping that smile there.

I led him into a small house that looked unremarkable enough and the lady there smiled as she led us upstairs. She ushered us into the room and I passed her a note before she left; Sherrinford had of course been right about her, but he was smug enough without needing to be told that.

I took John to the window and led him out onto a small balcony. He suddenly got it.

“'Romeo and Juliet'!” he exclaimed. I smiled.

No”, I said simply. “Sherlock and John.”

The street was deserted but for all I cared there could have been a full-scale parade complete with marching band below us. Then and there we exchanged rings and I held and kissed the man that I valued above all other, on the same balcony famed for a tragic love story that ended in death.

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In the end, that analogy nearly proved all too correct.

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	9. Case 131: The Adventure Of The Vatican Cameos

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1887\. The first case of Sherlock and John, as opposed to Holmes and Watson. There is more cudd.... ahem, more manly embracing, and did the Pope's or the government's man steal the precious cameos? Meanwhile not everyone takes the dynamic duo's new relationship well – which can be a real pain in the backside!

_[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D.]_

Sherlock. Holmes. Loved. Me. And I wore his ring.

Somewhere out there was a parallel universe in which a Doctor John Watson continued his existence as mine had been until a few short days ago, unaware of the happiness that I felt every single time I looked at that wonderful silver band around my ring-finger, and the exact copy around someone else's finger. Sherlock was mine!

My only fear was that something was going to have to go _very_ wrong to balance the books this time!

Undoubtedly the best part of our new relationship was that we now shared a bed as and where possible. Even if we were just sleeping together and not actually 'sleeping together' – you know what I mean! - there was something wonderful in going to bed with the man I loved and walking up to find that, during the night, we were invariably tangled together. He always seemed to wrap all his limbs around me like some demented octopus as if he feared I would contrive to make a run for it overnight. His morning confusion was wonderful to behold; he growled at there being no coffee and then growled at me again for leaving to fetch him some! And his pout when he realized he would have to choose whether or not to release me in order to get his beloved caffeine – it was glorious!

The only downside was that, inevitably, one of us had to leave for their own room before anyone came in. I was I suppose fortunate in that I have always been an early riser and rarely needed the alarm clock that I carried to wake me at a set time, but I resented having to 'keep up appearances'. However we were still Abroad, and who knew what the reaction might be if anyone came to suspect? Come to that, what would happen when we got back to England?

Oh well. We would cross that bridge when we came to it. I had the man I loved and I was gloriously happy with my life right now.

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The Fates were indeed preparing to balance the books. I was to have little over three years before my friend would be torn from me – and in one of those twists of which they seem far too fond for my liking, my nightmare about that exploding house would prove all too real as Reichenbach would mark not only the start but the end of my earthly happiness.

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It was only a short train journey from Verona to Padua where Sherlock had been asked to assist his brother Guilford, who had been dispatched here on some diplomatic matter or other. I knew that Sherlock rarely spoke to his immediate elder brother and that their mother had had Words with the latter over his treatment of Sherlock on more than one occasion. Mr. Guilford Holmes may have had a reputation as the family joker but few could out-plan my friend when he got going; I had been told by Sherlock to not mention feathers and/or strong glue at any time during our encounter. I would probably remember that prohibition.

Feathers and strong glue, feathers and strong glue, feathers and strong glue, do not mention.....

“Randall thinks you may have better luck than me in finding some lost treasures”, Mr. Guilford Holmes said as we sat down in his room at his hotel. From his narrowed eyes he had clearly noticed the fact that we were sat close together, but a sharp look from Sherlock silenced any smart-aleck remarks that he might have felt inclined to have made. “It is another tricky situations involving these Eye-ties like that vixen Mrs. Ricoletti.”

I remembered that particular murderous female, now serving a deserved life-sentence in this her home country. Not in this area though; she had come from a town on the Adriatic coast some way to the south of here.

“Concentrate, because here comes the history bit”, our host said, producing a lollipop from Lord alone knew where. “Italy had been shuffling towards unification since the revolutions of 'Forty-Eight, and Sardinia-Piedmont seized most of the Pope's lands in 'Fifty-Nine, grabbing the rest during the Franco-Prussian War in 'Seventy and holding poor Pope Pius the Ninth was effectively held prisoner in Rome. Ever since then the Eye-ties have been busy stripping him of all his lands, although they are so hopelessly disorganized that it had been taking them ages to find them all. A few weeks ago they seized a small private country house just outside of the town here and that was where the fun started.”

“I doubt any case that requires two Holmeses to attend to it can be described as ‘fun’”, Sherlock said stiffly. His brother glared at him before continuing.

“Thankfully at least one of us got here on time”, his brother said coolly. “Work before holidays and all that.”

It was rather wonderful to see Sherlock give his brother a long, cool look, which had the nuisance shuffling his chair backwards. I allowed myself a smirk at the pest's expense. A large one.

“Amongst the items in the house were the 'Rainbow Cameos' a set of twelve cameos of different popes”, Mr. Guilford Holmes continued, sucking at his lollipop. “They were originally seven in number and each a colour of the rainbow; the rarer cameo colours are as you might imagine worth more let alone that this was a complete set. They were given to the Papacy in the early seventeenth century by King Philip the Third of Spain. When Pope Pius was elected† back in Forty-Six he decided to make his impression on history by adding five more in five other colours commemorating other famous popes – himself included of course! The Eye-ties knew about the things but they did not know where they were being kept.”

“Background information is important”, Sherlock said. “I presume that the burgled house was the hiding-place, and that someone either found out or informed on them?”

His brother nodded.

“The house was taken possession of a week ago at the end of last month”, he said. “The twenty-seventh. The Cameos were definitely there on the twenty-sixth because the people in charge of the house showed them to some friends of theirs and checked them after they had left, so they disappeared sometime overnight. Now the Eye-ties are blaming papal agents for stealing their treasures while the Pope is claiming that the government actually has them and just want to make trouble.”

“Could the Cameos have been taken earlier and some copies left?” I suggested.

Mr. Guilford Holmes scoffed and looked set to make some sharp retort but Sherlock got there first.

“John is quite right to advance that hypothesis”, he said icily. “Answer the question, Guilford.”

I did not stick my tongue out at Sherlock's brother, much as I wanted to. But it was close.

“One of the guardians was an antiques expert”, the annoying little pipsqueak said stiffly, “which was why the place was chosen. It would seem that the Pope foresaw such a ruse.”

“Why would the Italians want to claim that papal agents did it?” I wondered.

“Being denied the blessing of the spiritual leader of the world’s Catholics is irritating, even amongst the irreligious Italian leadership”, Sherlock explained. “Catholic countries around the world are less inclined to do business with them while their spiritual leader is effectively held captive. They might hope to obtain some sort of deal in return for their ‘suddenly finding’ the lost treasures. But you do not think that the Italians have them, Guilford?”

“No I do not”, his brother said. “The government chap up here when the theft happened is one Marcus Latimer – his mother was Italian and his father English – and he is up for promotion so this is a disaster for him.”

“Which brings us to the people present in the home at the time the Cameos disappeared”, Sherlock said. _“Dramatis personae?”_

“Only four of them”, Mr. Guilford Holmes said. “It is just a small house set some way apart from the town where one of the saints did a miracle in creating a well. It is just the elderly couple and their nephew who is in and out just now as he has just bought his own house.”

“So the nephew needed money”, I muttered. Sherlock quirked an eyebrow at my cynicism but did not comment on it.

“The elderly couple are the Columbos, Nico and Benedicta”, Mr. Guilford Holmes said. “Not beyond reproach but pretty nearly; they have spent almost all their married lives there, taking possession when the last couple wanted to retire over thirty years ago. He is the expert; they are both not far short of sixty. If they had wanted to take the things they could have easily done so any time in the past two decades; indeed given the inevitability of the Italians unearthing their hiding-place they would have been wise so to do. Their nephew Mr. Luigi Gallo on the other hand is a bit more interesting. He had trouble getting the money together to buy his house from what I understand; selling something like the Cameos would set him up for life. He has been involved in a couple of instances of sharp financial practice but nothing openly illegal. As of yet. And....”

He stopped dramatically. I pictured a mental drum-roll.

“The empty cameo case was found under his bed!”

“A thoroughly stupid place in which the real thief would never hide something so incriminating”, Sherlock said acidly. “Then again, it could be a double bluff on his part. The fourth person was an Italian government agent, was he not?”

His brother nearly choked on his lollipop.

“Damnation, Sher!” he growled. “How on earth did you know that?”

Sherlock fixed him with an icy glare. I was sure that the temperature in the room fell by several degrees. I wondered if medical services might be about to be suddenly in demand; surely a hotel this size had its own doctor? I might even have been inclined to have gone and looked for him. Perhaps.

“Not ‘Sher’, got it”, Mr. Guilford Holmes muttered, edging his chair further away from an azure glare that was enough to strip the varnish off the table. “Sorry. The fourth fellow was a priest, Father Calocerus. He was named for the saint who performed the miracle of the well and was a local man. He lived in a hermit cell on the grounds and spent most of his time praying in the small chapel there. Mr. Latimer said that he was likely a government agent although it is the old story of different departments, and the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing.”

“If he was a government agent, then why did he not tell his masters about the Cameos being there?” Sherlock asked.

“I suppose split loyalties”, his brother said. “He was a priest after all, and the Pope was his boss. Or he may not have known; he never went to the house I was told.”

“You keep saying ‘was’”, I observed. “Why?”

“Because he was and not is”, Mr. Guilford Holmes said heavily. “I am afraid that he may indeed have taken the Cameos for himself; we know that he took a train back to Rome just hours before the raid.”

“I take it that he did not reach Rome?” Sherlock ventured.

“He barely made it out of the station”, Mr. Guilford Holmes said glumly. “The train guard found him less than five minutes after the train had departed. He also remembered that when he had boarded the train he had been carrying a bag, which had of course vanished.”

Sherlock thought for a moment.

“How did they identify the body?” I asked.

“I thought that too”, our host admitted, looking a little annoyed that I had spotted something, “but his brother came up from Rome and identified him for us. He is a priest too; the two did not get on he said, and Father Calocerus left him nothing in his will except an engraved ring that, presumably, was a family item. One odd thing though; the dead man had the ring in his pocket for some reason.”

I wondered why the fellow had had his ring in his pocket rather than wearing it, although perhaps it had been damaged in some way. Sherlock smiled knowingly.

“I rather think that we need to talk with this Mr. Latimer”, he said.

“I shall set up a meeting with him”, Mr. Guilford Holmes said. “Do you think that you can help?”

“The solution seems rather obvious”, Sherlock yawned. “I expect a resolution very shortly, although I doubt that you will like it very much.”

His brother looked at him expectantly.

“And if you had not called me ‘Sher’ earlier”, my friend said with a smile, “something that both you and Randall both know full well that I do _not_ appreciate, then I might have been prepared to tell you at once. But as it is, you can wait while I 'feather' out this case and 'stick' all the facts together!”

I tried to hold back a snigger but I failed dismally. And I really did not care that I failed.

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Mr. Marcus Latimer whom we met the following morning was a nervous fellow in his early forties, dark-haired and black-avised. Sherlock got straight down to business.

“I have some questions for you, Mr. Latimer”, he said, “and while I appreciate that lying is an essential part of your trade I do urge you to be honest with us. I know or I can guess what happened with the Cameos but I need you to confirm certain aspects of the case. First, who was the government agent that you sent to spy on Father Calocerus?”

“I can assure you that I sent no-one”, the man declared roundly.

“Then we are wasting our time”, Sherlock said. “Doctor?”

I rose with him to go but Mr Latimer sighed heavily and bade us sit down again. He looked cross but resigned.

“His name was Gianni Bianci”, he said. “One of our most trusted operatives or so I was told when he was assigned to the job, but I very much fear that he killed Father Calocerus and took the Cameos for himself. Sold to a private buyer they would set him up for life anywhere in the world. He was based in a small hotel near the property and he checked out on the day that they disappeared. He has not been seen since.”

“I need a physical description of him, please”, Sherlock said.

“Forty-two, average build, above average height and blond hair”, Mr. Latimer said. “I did not meet him as this was a case handled by – mishandled by another department. I was merely brought in to clear up the mess whereon they provided me with his description.”

“Father Calocerus?” Sherlock asked.

“Thirty-nine, again average build, average height and no tonsure”, Mr. Latimer said. “He had fair hair, quite a good head of it, and he wore spectacles which he needed all the time.”

Sherlock smiled knowingly.

“His brother on the other hand is bald and does not wear spectacles?” he asked.

Mr. Latimer looked at him curiously.

“Yes”, he said warily. “But how did you know that?”

“It seemed more than probable”, Sherlock said dismissively. “The couple's nephew who was also there; what does he look like?”

“Twenty-one, average height, round as a ball and styles his hair in tight curls”, the man said, curling his lip in disdain. _“And_ perfumes it. Worst of all he has an attempt at something which he mistakenly considers to be a moustache. The young these days!”

I smiled at his words. Sherlock thought for a moment.

“I have a request to make of you that is a little unusual”, he said. “I would like my friend the doctor to examine the body.”

“To what end?” I asked. He smiled and shook his head.

“If I told you that, my friend”, he said, “it would defeat the purpose of the exercise.”

I do not know who was the more confused at that point, Mr. Latimer or myself. Probably myself as per usual. And 'someone' could cut with the damn nodding!

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I spent a solid half-hour examining the late Father Calocerus. He had been in good physical condition at the time of his death and I could find nothing the least bit out of the ordinary which annoyed me greatly. I was clearly missing some vital clue and letting Sherlock down. I wrote up my notes then went off to join my friend at a small restaurant in the town. 

“Did you find anything unusual in your examination?” he asked.

“Not really”, I said. “He was killed with a sharp dagger – the report on him had told me that – but that apart, nothing.”

“Was he overweight or underweight?” he asked, mystifying me even further. 

“His body weight was almost exactly what I would have expected for a man of his age”, I said. 

“You found exactly what I hoped that you would find”, he praised. “Well done.”

I preened, although I still had no idea as to what I had or had not done that was so great. But I would take the praise anyway.

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We returned to our hotel and Sherlock still refused to tell his brother what he knew until we had had dinner (I may just possibly have enjoyed the look on said brother's face more than I should have done). Later we adjourned to a small private room where Mr. Guilford Holmes and Mr. Latimer were waiting, both somewhat impatiently. Sherlock sat down opposite them both and I sat next to him.

“I am afraid that I do not have good news for you, sir”, Sherlock said to Mr. Latimer. “Without doubt the Rainbow Cameos are currently in the possession of His Holiness the Pope, and I am certain that the Italian government will never see hide nor hair of them.”

“How can you know that?” his brother demanded.

“I not only know it, I can prove it”, Sherlock said firmly. “Let us relate the sequence of events as they actually happened from the point of view of the man who took them and who doubtless handed them over to the Holy Father in person.”

“Gianni Bianci”, Mr Latimer said scornfully.

“No”, Sherlock said. “Father Calocerus.”

We all stared at him in shock.

“But he is dead!” I objected.

“The man that you examined earlier is, I can tell you, Gianni Bianci”, Sherlock said. “You may summon up someone from Rome who knows him if you do not believe me, but two things at least show this. First we know that the real Father Calocerus was a hermit who relied on the charity of others for his food. Such people are often undernourished yet this man was clearly getting enough food to sustain him. Clearly therefore the man that you examined was not a hermit.”

Mr. Guilford Holmes narrowed his eyes at me; Sherlock was again sitting a little closer than was socially acceptable in polite circles. But I was not going to move away so I stared right back at him.

“The second thing relates to what really happened that day”, Sherlock said, eyeing his brother sharply (hah!). “Father Calocerus is a loyal Catholic at the end of the day. He has known of the Cameos' real hiding-place since their arrival there; he had avoided ever going into the room where they were kept so that he could feign ignorance if asked about them. He does however know that sooner or later their location will be revealed to the Italian government and that only he can save them for his spiritual master the Pope. In a small bag they can easily be smuggled to safety once danger threatens.”

“People forget that hermits, like servants, have a lot of time to observe the world around them. I am sure that the Columbos were, as they say, in on it, and that the arrival of their visitors the day before was not a coincidence. The residents of the house have their own contacts and have learned that a government agent is in the area, so they arrange for the visitors to tip off Rome that yes, the Cameos are indeed in the house. They do not of course know who the agent is but Father Calocerus realizes that if someone suddenly leaves the house in the next few days - especially if they happen to be carrying anything - then the agent will almost certainly follow them.”

“The priest therefore steals the Cameos. He is fully aware that the couple's unpleasant nephew has financial difficulties so he plants the empty case under the man's bed, to divert suspicion away from the Columbos. Then he heads to the railway station where, as he had expected, the agent Gianni Bianci bursts into his compartment just as the train is about to leave. I asked there and they told me that it was a local train, a non-corridor one. The priest notes that the two men are similar enough in appearance and build for him to take advantage of that fact. The agent does not suspect that the middle-aged priest would carry a weapon; it is all over in an instant.”

I winced at that. A murderous priest?

“Father Calocerus now moves fast”, Sherlock continued. “The only slight setback to his hasty plan is that his ring by which the dead man will be identified as him will not fit on the fellow's larger fingers. He has time to don the man's clothes and to dress him in his own, then immediately pulls the communication cord.”

“Why did he do that?” Mr. Guilford Holmes demanded.

“Because he wished to alight from the train while it was still in the vicinity of the town”, Sherlock told him. “The body had to be found here otherwise attention might start to focus elsewhere, possibly even as far as Rome. Then of course there was the obliging brother who arrived so quickly from Rome to identify the body.”

“The brother lied?” I asked.

“There was no brother”, Sherlock said, “or if there was he did not come to Padua. On leaving the train Father Calocerus went to a barber's shop and had his head shaved – he must have mentioned to the Columbos that his brother was bald – and doffs his spectacles, then 'identifies' the man who he has just killed as himself. His victim's clothes and the change of hairstyle complete the makeover; no-one will be surprised that two brothers look alike and the police will likely link the brother's arrival to the priest's failed attempt to remove the Cameos which was prevented by the murderous Mr. Bianci. He claims that the ring, which might have betrayed him, was the one thing that his brother had agreed to leave to him, and it is duly handed over. He then catches a later train to Rome where he visits the Holy Father and hands over his prize.”

It sounded incredible yet we all knew there was no other way that it could have happened. The diplomat stared at him clearly aghast.

“So the Cameos are lost”, Mr. Latimer said bitterly. “My superiors will _not_ be pleased.”

“In fairness, you did everything that you could to obtain them”, Sherlock said. “Also, had your government trusted you fully then the whole matter might have turned out otherwise, particularly if you had met Mr. Bianci before his demise whereon you would not have been fooled by the deception. I do not think that they can blame you. I am sure that, many years from now and after the papal situation is finally resolved, some mysterious private buyer will donate a set of twelve coloured Cameos to the Vatican out of the kindness of their hearts. Indeed I would bet money on it!”

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Mr. Latimer left us to report the failure of his mission and we returned to our hotel for the night, mercifully minus Sherlock's annoying brother who was still looking suspiciously at us. Also annoying was the fact that for some reason we had to change rooms although our new rooms were actually a little larger and quite pleasant. I slept like a log with the man I loved wrapped around me.

We had ordered an early breakfast the following morning so that we could catch the morning train to continue our journey Lord alone knew where to (although I had some hopes for Venice). I was surprised halfway through, to hear what sounded like gunfire coming from somewhere nearby. I looked at my friend in alarm.

“Not to worry”, he said through a mouthful of bacon which, mercifully, he finished before continuing. “Someone decided to play a joke on the new occupants of the Silver Suite and it seems that they did not exhibit much of a sense of humour.

I frowned.

“That was our room until yesterday”, I observed. He nodded.

“I know”, he said. “I told the hotel clerk to tell Guilford that it still was.”

There was an anguished yelp from nearby followed by another shot. I grinned.

“Someone has learned a useful life lesson”, Sherlock said sententiously.

I liked him even more!

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Postscriptum: Sherlock turned out to be right about the Cameos. The Vatican City, the smallest state in the world and with a wall running all the way around it, was created for the Pope under the Lateran Treaty in 1929. Just three months after that the Rainbow Cameos 'miraculously resurfaced' having been anonymously gifted to the Pope to celebrate his new earthly realm. And my friend very generously paid for his brother's time in a Padua hospital where he had to have several pellets extracted from his backside for having disturbed a champion marksman and his wife who had been enjoying a free night in a hotel in town. Oh dear how sad never mind.

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_Notes:_   
_† Possibly with a belated justification; Pius would go on to become the longest serving Holy Father (31½ years) at least as regards verifiable tenures of office. His successor the then-Pope Leo the Thirteenth would have the third-longest reign, and would also need Sherlock's assistance some years later._

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	10. Case 132: The Valley Of Fear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1887-1888. Sherlock and John face another case with a supernatural element, as a ramshackle empire has to cope with a local vampire problem. Can the great detective solve the riddle of the valley in which even armed men fear to tread? (Hint: yes).

_[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D.]_

It was one of those quirks of fate that the day after solving the case of the Vatican Cameos a telegram reached us from England. I assumed initially it was from the surgery possibly demanding my return, but found that it was actually from my brother. I read the contents with amazement.

“Not bad news, I hope”, Sherlock said, materializing behind me at the table. Of course I did not jump in shock, nor let out a girly shriek at being surprised in such a manner. 

All right, I did. Sherlock said that he would not let me publish this story unless I put that bit in, the bastard! I glared at the stealthy bacon-stealer.

“It is from Stevie”, I said. “He has finally asked that girl he met at university in Edinburgh to marry him, and for some strange, inexplicable reason she said yes!”

After our meeting during the Musgrave Ritual case in Fifeshire my brother had returned to complete his law course in the Scottish capital, graduating in 'Eighty-One (top of his class, the show-off!). He had then been fortunate enough to obtain a junior position at a practice in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, in the same county as our home village of Belford. When his company had opened a second office in the town of Berwick-on-Tweed two years back I knew that he had been doubly desperate to move there because the girl he had been friends with in college, Miss Henrietta Leigh, came from that town. I had ribbed him about spending all those years in college being afraid to say anything but it seemed that her poor judgement was matched with amazing patience, for they had taken up again almost immediately on his arrival in England's most northerly outpost. Though quite why she had said yes to the inferior and overly tall Watson, the Lord alone knew.

I had met Miss Leigh only the one time when they had come down one Christmas. She had impressed me with her strong personality (she was just a touch younger than me and 'someone' could stop smirking _right now!_ ) but when she did what most of the female population seemed wont to do and simpered at my friend, I had had hard work to avoid an eye-roll of magnificent proportions. Honestly, it was as if the blue-eyed genius had a huge sign above his head which said 'ready, willing and available'! Well not any more!

Sherlock sat down and stared curiously at me.

“You are happy for your brother?” he asked, helping himself to coffee.

“Of course”, I said. “I just wish..... you know. That I could tell him.”

A part of my mind to which I rarely listened suggested that the all too observant Stevie probably knew full well just what sort of relationship Sherlock and I really had. I looked down and realized that I had been gripping my spoon so hard that I had succeeded in slightly bending it. Fortunately my friend had not noticed (or was tactful enough not to remark on the fact) and I sipped my own coffee thoughtfully.

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Our next stop on leaving Padua and its murderous hermits was indeed La Serenissima, Venice, which was so wonderful that we spent a whole week there taking in the sights. I did not like the idea of going around so close to the water even though it was of course flat calm, but Sherlock found a restaurant where gondolas were moored outside and the food brought out to us. I loved him even more for a small but considerate act like that.

We next journeyed through the beautiful eastern Alps – suggestions by a certain blue-eyed genius as to the possibility of a cable-car ride were met with a glare frostier than some of the mountain-tops! – stopping at Salzburg and Linz, and reached glorious Vienna three days before Christmas where once more I dragged Sherlock around all the tourist sites. He seemed a little bemused by my (over-)enthusiasm but was prepared to go along with it because – well, because he was my Sherlock. I was happy, and he seemed happy that I was happy. When I presented him with the pipe-case that I had purchased from Mr. Leowitz in London I knew that he felt guilty that he had not thought to buy me anything, even though I insisted that the holiday itself was more than enough. And besides I would return from this trip with something worth far more than anything money could buy – him.

All right, I actually said that to him. And I loved him still the more when he did not press the matter of my complete and utter verbal incontinence!

These were the halcyon days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire when the polyglot Hapsburg dominions had been basically split in twain, ruled jointly from Vienna and Budapest (a snarky 'Times' journalist had quipped that this had only been done so that the Austrians and Hungarians could each suppress their numerous minorities who all wanted independence, which had been probably a little too close to the truth). We continued our unhurried way down the beautiful blue Danube and spent a pleasant day in Bratislava, then continued on to the lovely city of Budapest which I enjoyed greatly. I wanted to venture as far east as the Crimean Peninsula and witness the battlefields and memorials of the still-recent war there before we turned for home, although I still had a few places that I hoped to take in on the way back. Best of all there were no more unfortunate happenings that required my genius friend's investigative abilities.

I really, _really_ should have known better.

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Even though we were travelling as private gentlemen, word had somehow reached the British embassy in Budapest of our arrival in the city, and on New Year's Eve a telegram arrived at our hotel asking us if we might call on the British ambassador 'in a private capacity'. I therefore accompanied my friend to the embassy the following day, our departure having been postponed for twenty-four hours. I hoped desperately that it was not to be for longer.

Sir Hugh Baffington-Smythe was the archetypal Briton abroad, I thought upon meeting him. He was about fifty, a solidly-built patrician of a man with pale blond hair and handle-bar moustache with a military air about him. This did not come as a surprise; I knew that his family hailed from my home county of Northumberland (although far to the south of my own Belford, a place near Tynemouth if I remember correctly) and that his father and younger brother were both in the army. I also noticed, with some terror, a set of Northumbrian bagpipes on a chair in the corner of the room. I prayed fervently that we would escape without having heard them in use.

Unusually for a diplomat Sir High got straight to the point.

“I know that you two gentlemen are on holiday”, he said, “but I wondered if you would be able to investigate a rather curious matter that has come to my attention. It would mean a considerable detour, heading to Debrecen then taking a local train to Kolozsvár. We have a mission there and our man would help with all the arrangements to get you back on course.”

“Perhaps you would care to tell us what this involves”, Sherlock smiled. The diplomat fiddled nervously with his moustache.

“Vampires”, he said at last.

My eyes widened. Whatever I may have been expecting, that had not been it.

“Vampires?” I asked incredulously. Sir Hugh nodded.

“Take a seat, gentlemen”, he said. “This may take some explaining.”

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“Volgafel is a small village about ten miles from Kolozsvár, on the edge of the province of Transylvania”, our host began. “Although that seems close to civilization it is a sparsely-populated area, and from what our man on the ground says culturally very backwards. It is also home to a rebel movement as far as the government here in Budapest is concerned; the old Grand Duchy of Transylvania voted to federate with Hungary back in 'Sixty-Seven but may in the eastern parts of it wished and still wish to be part of Rumania instead.”

I smiled inwardly at the unwitting condescension in his voice. I knew that the political instability in the Balkans was causing unease across Europe, and that particularly after the recent Russo-Ottoman war Great Britain was still fearful that the Bear was seeking to establish a presence in the Mediterranean that would threaten our links with our eastern empire. Plus the fact that the Bulgarians had gained a _de facto_ independence out of the recent wars (even if the 'Greater Bulgaria' that they had aspired to had eluded them largely due to British resistance at their becoming a Russian satellite), and their success had of course only encouraged others who also wanted independence. I supported the idea of people ruling themselves as much as possible, but even someone as unpolitical as I could see that all sorts of troubles would lie ahead once the many competing would-be nations started fighting over where their borders should be.

“Despite being in the middle of nowhere, Volgafel is of some historical importance”, Sir Hugh went on. “It is the site of a battle fought and lost against the Ottomans when they pursued a group of Wallachian rebels into Hungary during the uprising of 'Seventy-Seven, and wiped them out. Not a single man survived, the prisoners being murdered after the battle was over presumably in an attempt to cower the locals. It therefore holds much meaning for the people there. And to cap it all, we have vampires to add to the mix!”

“How so?” Sherlock asked.

“Two months ago an off-duty soldier out on patrol was found unconscious. He was one of a group in the village and had become separated while investigating a barn. His fellow soldiers found him lying up against a cart, with two puncture wounds in his neck. The Carpathian Hills nearby are renowned for stories of vampires sucking the blood of their victims, presumably from the vampire bats that do inhabit the area.”

“What did he remember?” Sherlock asked.

“Just everything going black”, the diplomat said. “He thought that there was some sort of winged creature around but he was not sure. The soldiers left the area rather quickly.”

“I am not surprised!” I said. He smiled.

“I should explain that Volgafel is in effect the 'capital' of the valley”, Sir Hugh continued. “It does not help that the upper reaches of the valley are in what one might call 'Transylvania proper'. Two weeks ago a night patrol marched the length the valley, and had got about halfway when they stopped to investigate a local farm. It was a huge place and when the soldiers reassembled, one of their number was missing. The fellow was eventually found lying inside an out-building, dead this time and again with two puncture-wounds on his neck. The soldiers immediately abandoned the patrol and returned to the town.”

Sherlock pressed his fingers together.

“Have there been any further patrols up the valley?” he asked.

“One”, Sir Hugh said. “Over a hundred men marched all the way to Volgafel and back again and never split into groups smaller than four. Nothing happened.”

My friend smiled knowingly before turning to me.

“I think”, he said, “that a trip to vampire country is in order. Tell me Sir Hugh, does the local commander speak English?”

“He should”, the diplomat smiled. “He is half-Welsh, claiming direct descent from the great Llewellyn himself. His name is Llewellyn Feher.”

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I had in truth been surprised to learn that the Hungarians would have accepted being told to do by a foreigner, though after a few moments with Captain Llewellyn Feher I soon realized just why. The man was frankly terrifying! He must have been six foot six at least, a solid hunk of humanity with curly red hair and the sort of attitude that suggested anyone not following his orders within two seconds had better have either a good reason or good life insurance! He also seemed wary of us although that could have been just natural xenophobia; we all knew what the Celts could be like when the mood took them. 

“I would of course be grateful if you and the doctor could help clear up this case”, the soldier said courteously. “The effect on the men's morale is bad, and the excursion up the valley in force last week did not help.”

“Why?” I asked. He turned to me.

“We are in what amounts to hostile territory here, doctor”, he explained. “This is some miles outside the official province of Transylvania but the people in this town see themselves as part of that area and most of them want out of the Empire. The Empire's forced teaching of Hungarian culture to their children in the schools is only inflaming matters still further; many parents have withdrawn their children rather than see then indoctrinated, as they view it. I am also sure that they are hoarding weapons for a possible uprising, although I doubt they would be stupid enough to do so anywhere around Volgafel now that we have made our interest in the area clear.”

Sherlock looked at him curiously. 

“Your mother came from this country?” he asked. 

“Yes”, our host answered, clearly bemused at the question. “From Brasso, some way to the south of here.”

Sherlock nodded.

“We shall be going that way when we leave here”, he said, “as it is the last stop before the border. What about the two soldiers?”

That seemed to evince a reaction. The Welshman bristled.

“Martin Feher – no relation; it is a common name meaning fair or white and we have three such in the regiment – he was the first victim. He is a good man, a little prone to drink but then we all have our weaknesses. He was one of those who found the dead man, Tomas Vanj, during the second raid.”

“I am surprised that he wanted to go again after his experience”, I observed.

“He is a good man”, the soldier repeated. “He knows his duty.”

“Both local men?” Sherlock asked.

“Yes, both from the town”, Captain Feher said, clearly wondering where Sherlock was going with this line of questioning. “Sir....”

“Are you planning any further excursions up the valley?” my friend interrupted.

The Welshman looked as if he was considering whether to trust us before seemingly deciding that it was worth the risk. 

“Yes”, he said. “A raid on a farm just beyond Volgafel at daybreak the day after tomorrow. There is nothing there, at least as far as I know, but I think a second raid passing off safely might help calm the men down a bit.”

“The doctor and I are travelling on towards the border tomorrow”, Sherlock said, which was news to me. “I do not think that there is anything here worth investigating sir, although I am sure that Sir Hugh back in Budapest would expect to be informed of any future... developments.”

I wondered at the pause. The Welshman nodded.

“He shall so be”, he said.

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“You did not tell me that we would be moving on so soon”, I said as we sat in our hotel room later that day. 

“I do not intend to go far”, Sherlock said. “Just to the next town where we shall await developments.”

“What developments would those be?” I inquired. 

He smiled at me mischievously.

“The next vampire attack”, he said. “It will occur during the raid on the farm. We shall return to the town that day and sort matters out.”

“Sorting out a vampire?” I asked dubiously. 

“I rather think that this particular sort of vampire can be reasoned with”, he said enigmatically.

I frowned because I knew from the look on his face that he would say no more. And as usual when I thought the worst, I was to be proven right!

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I did not sleep well that night as, due to some sort of major event in the town, we had had to settle for two rooms in different parts of our hotel. Apparently I was now destined not to get my full eight hours unless I had a human octopus wrapped around me every night. Although I felt better the following morning when Sherlock came to my room and we had some very manly embracing before breakfast. Even if I could _hear_ him thinking about calling it The Other Thing That Started With The Third Letter Of The Alphabet And Rhymed With Huddling. Harrumph!

About an hour later we made our departure from the rather decrepit station in Kolozsvár (I noticed at least one soldier watching us depart which meant that Captain Feher was keeping tabs on us) and proceeded south as far as the next town of Bruckendorf‡ before booking into a hotel there. It was a pleasant enough area and I enjoyed our day there walking around the town; although there were rather too many mountains in the area for comfort at least I did not have to climb any of them. At least we had adjoining rooms this time so I was able to sleep properly with my man.

The next morning we boarded an early train back to Kolozsvár. I wondered to myself if this might be the first time that my friend's colossal self-confidence might actually be misplaced. Until I saw the look of shock on Captain Feher's face when we were announced and thought, possibly not. 

“There has been another attack, I presume?” Sherlock asked. The soldier looked at him sharply. 

“How the blazes could you have known that?” he demanded. “The men only got back three hours ago!”

Sherlock looked at him thoughtfully before turning to me.

“Tell me doctor”, he said conversationally, “how do you think the Austro-Hungarian government would react to the news that one of their army officers is in league with people seeking to break up their country?”

I gaped, though my expression could not have been more shocked than that of the Welshman.

“I think that you have outstayed your welcome, gentlemen”, he said acidly.

Sherlock turned back to him.

“I know everything that you did”, he said firmly. “I should like to know one thing more, though. _Why_ did you do it?”

I thought for a moment that the soldier was going to continue denying whatever he had done, but his shoulders slumped and he all but fell back into his chair. For a while he just sat there before pulling himself together and extracting a framed photograph from a drawer, passing it over to Sherlock who showed it to me. It was of two young men in army uniform, their arms around each other and both smiling broadly at the photographer. The taller of the two was very obviously our host. 

Sherlock nodded understandingly.

“Your brother?” he asked.

“Half-brother”, the Welshman said with a sigh. “My father was Welsh, out of Porth in the Rhondda, and he died when I was three. My mother stayed in Wales and married a local fellow, a miner out of Maerdy called Davy Jones. She was worried that I would not approve when I grew up, but my stepfather is a good man and they are happy together. That is – was - Owain, their son who was five years younger than me.”

“What happened to him?” Sherlock asked. The soldier's face darkened.

“Owain was Welsh born and bred”, he said, “but he took to the Carpathians like it was his native land, even more so than me. He came to view the Hungarians as the enemy occupying the lands of his people, and did everything that he could to unseat them. I warned him to take care but he thought that he was indestructible.”

I belatedly figured things out.

“You are a double agent”, I said. 

The soldier hung his head but said nothing.

“It must have taken you full ten years”, Sherlock said gently. “Revenge for you truly was a dish best served cold. Sir Hugh told us about the massacre at Volgafel; that was when your brother was killed. You found out that he and his men had been betrayed and although it took time, you were able to use your contacts to find the man responsible.”

“Who was?” I asked.

“Private Vanj”, Sherlock said crisply. “The sole fatality of the 'vampire'.”

He turned back to the soldier.

“It was all exceptionally well-planned”, he said. “Once you were in a position of power you arranged for the men to mount a raid on the valley. You knew the stories about vampires as well as how the place got its name – Volgafel, the Valley of Fear – and you played on that. You arranged with Private Feher that he would be the first 'victim' and either you or he made the false puncture wounds on his neck. _Is_ he a relation?”

The soldier nodded.

“He is my first cousin”, he said. “The son of my mother's brother Matthias; he lives not far from here.”

Sherlock nodded.

“Then comes the second raid”, he said. “This is what you have been planning for all along. You did not mention it to us but you led that raid. It was easy to get Private Vanj alone for a moment, away from the others. You gagged him then, I would wager, told him why you were about to kill him. I dare say that if we put in for the body to be disinterred we would still be hard put to find where the fatal wound went in. Was your cousin involved?”

Captain Feher shook his head.

“He only kept watch”, he said. “The murder is mine and mine alone; I take full responsibility for it.”

I knew from the look on his face that the man did not regret his actions in the slightest. Nor on reflection did I feel he should. His brother had been destroyed by the actions of another and he had only sought justice for one he loved. I would have done exactly the same.

“A just vengeance”, I said before I could stop myself. Sherlock looked at me.

“Do you think so?” he asked. “It is still murder.”

“I would do the same if it had been someone I loved”, I said firmly.

“Like _your_ brother”, he said understandingly.

If I was being strictly truthful with myself it had not been Stevie that I had been thinking of when I uttered those words but a certain person not so far away. Mercifully Sherlock turned back to the Welshman, although the fractional hesitation before he did so was a little unnerving.

“The doctor finds in your favour”, he said, “and in the light of the facts I am inclined to agree with him. But you cannot continue here, sir. Not after taking a life, even if it was the life of a Judas.”

The Welshman nodded.

“I had thought to go to Patagonia, or maybe the Falkland Isles”, he said. “It is the other side of the world and there are Welsh communities down there. I shall take my cousin if he will come.”

“I would advise you both so to do”, Sherlock said. “The doctor will doubtless be making a novel out of this small adventure but I am sure that he can be persuaded to amend the ending, doubtless making you die a death in a freak storm at sea that his readers will consider as just and fitting. I have contacts who can make sure that your death is made official, as I am sure that the Hungarian government would seek vengeance otherwise. Governments are I am afraid like that, wherever one goes in the world.”

“Thank you, sir”, the soldier smiled.

I looked back down at the picture of the two carefree young men and mused on the ties of family and friendship, and the lengths that some people would go to honour them. As Sherlock had once said to me, everyone had their breaking-point, their reason that would inspire them to commit an act of murder in the name of what they considered to be justice. Even me.

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Postscriptum: I was frankly unsurprised when, some nine years after our adventure on the borders of Transylvania, the Irish author Bram Stoker published his famous novel 'Dracula' set close to where this case had taken place. Of course vampires are not real but I would have defied anyone to visit this area and not to be affected by its chilling beauty. The people of the area eventually got their wish as a result of the Great War and Cluj†, as Kolozsvár became, is now (1936) Rumania's second-largest city.

The Feher cousins did indeed make it to the Falkland Islands where they lived the rest of their lives under assumed names. Sherlock's brother Randall successfully had them listed at having been lost in a sinking of a ship headed there, so there was no risk of any pursuit from Vienna or Budapest. Captain Llewellyn Feher died in 1928 and his cousin five years after that. Now that they are beyond the reach of mortal man I can reveal their true fate, one which I feel that they fully deserved.

By an odd coincidence and many years later, another 'vampire' would be instrumental in helping me to find even greater happiness with Sherlock. But not before more than the odd problem.

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_Notes:_   
_† Now Cluj-Napoca, having added the second part of its name in 1974 as it had first been recorded as Napoca in 124 AD. The town had been the capital of the Grand Principality of Transylvania and had briefly become part of Hungary again during World War Two when Nazi Germany 'awarded' it to its ally in 1940, but was reconquered by Soviet and Romanian forces in 1944. As of 2016 its population was estimated at around 325,000._   
_‡ Now Apahida._

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	11. Case 133: The Adventure Of No-Man's-Land

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1888\. A case that was in Russia yet not in Russia, and a murder which caused the sort of diplomatic problems that needed their very own Sherlock to sort out. Which he did in his own, unique way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mentioned also as the murder at the famous Trepoff Monastery in Odessa.

_[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D.]_

Sherlock looked at me and I groaned inwardly when I realized he was pulling out that look again. It had been bad enough that I had grown up with a stupidly tall little brother who could look like a kicked puppy and get me to do exactly what he wanted; trust me to end up living with another fellow who also had that trait. 

“What am I about to agree to this time?” I asked resignedly. 

We had left the borders of hilly Transylvania and proceeded via Kronstadt† and Bucharest, both pleasant enough cities, and it was now our second day in Constanţa, the chief port of Rumania. This land was then a much smaller country than it is today; the port had only been ceded after the recent Russian-Ottoman war in 'Seventy-Eight and I had been looking forward to a few days working our way along the coast of the Black Sea to famous Odessa, followed by a week exploring the Crimea before returning home.

There had been a most welcome message from Miss St. Leger on our arrival the day before; apparently a certain widow of a recently-departed member of parliament had gotten herself drunk at a court ball of all places and told Her Majesty exactly what she wanted to do the Prince of Wales (although knowing that gentleman's proclivities, he might well have agreed!). Then a most untimely banking collapse had meant that the self-same woman had had to sell up and quit the country. Miss St. Leger also told us that the newspapers had decided that this clearly showed I really had been innocent of the charges that the harlot had levelled against me, and I could now return to England without a stain on my character.

Oddly I was actually beginning to miss London, despite its dank climate, crime, crowded streets, eternal fog, grime and irritating lounge-lizards. Of course I missed our rooms which would allow me to permanently have the man I loved sleeping beside me. Our current hotel could not have put us further apart without dispatching one of us to the coal-bunker out the back, and I had got little sleep as a result.

“Randall had a telegram waiting for me when we arrived”, Sherlock said, again reminding me of his pestilential brother now happily many hundreds of miles away if still doing that annoying breathing thing. “He is doing me a favour to help cover the 'escape' of Captain Feher and his cousin, and asks if we can proceed quickly to Odessa in order to investigate 'a problematic death'.”

I did not believe that 'asks' for one moment but I smiled reassuringly at my friend. He was after all paying for this whole adventure and I owed him so much for that, and for everything else. That and the way his face visibly relaxed when he saw that I was happy with the change in plans. He looked almost heavenly when he truly smiled.

“Do we have to leave straight away?” I asked. He shook his head.

“We have to take two trains to the border with Russia”, he said, “and the last one has already gone today. So we have another evening here, plus it will take most of tomorrow to get there.”

I sighed. Another night far too far from my blue-eyed genius.

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After another sleepless night I discovered that for once Sherlock had been wrong. It took three tortuous days to make the journey to Odessa mainly because a huge snowstorm blew in off the Black Sea just hours after he had spoken to me about our change of plans and blocked all the railway lines in the region. However it would take more than a little meteorological irregularity to stop the wishes of Mr. Randall Holmes. When the snow had not been cleared by the middle of the next day Sherlock told me that his brother had hired a boat and that we would be making the journey by sea the day after. I half-wondered if the lounge-lizard had done that deliberately, having used his contacts to discover my dislike of sea-travel. It was indeed a very unpleasant and rough journey during which I was sick three times although the boat itself, a small steamer, was pleasant enough. 

Or at least the sides were nice to look down on.

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“So we have a murder in Russia”, I observed as our cab juddered away from our hotel in Odessa. Mercifully on some wonderfully solid and unyielding land even if that choppy and unpleasant wet stuff was still close by. So much for it being a calm inland sea!

“Yes and no.”

I looked at him exasperatedly. He stared back at me.

“Sherlock!” I complained (it was still not a whine although a cruel outside observer may in an uncharitable moment have deemed it as such). He smiled at me.

“The murder took place in the famous Trepoff Monastery, better known as St. Stephen’s-on-the-Water”, he explained. “It is the huge church that we saw as we drew in to land yesterday – although you may have been too busy throwing up at the time” (I scowled at him for that). “It is legally no-man’s-land; according to legend the church founder some six centuries back was promised all the land south of a post at the end of the headland, which then was about a yard of soil, so he and the monks then spent years carting tons of stone to create a new spur of land on which the monastery is now built. It is of course an Orthodox establishment but unusually it also has separate worship areas for members of other faiths.”

“The murder took place on holy ground?” I said, aghast.

“Indeed”, Sherlock said. “The Russians are threatening to get involved which would add a religious dimension to our already complicated relations with them. And as the dead man was a citizen of the Ottoman Empire across those dark Euxine waters, they too have an interest.”

“Problems all round, then”, I said.

That moment our cab turned a corner and came in sight of the huge monastery, looming dark against the distant horizon of the Black Sea. There was no customs post or anything as we effectively left Russia and we rumbled over the narrow causeway and up to the door, where an officious-looking guard looked at us as if he would have liked to have turned us away but (reluctantly) had to let us in. When the huge oak doors slammed shut behind us I was hard put to remember that this was a religious establishment, and not a prison.

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Abbot Godfrid was a tall lean fellow in his fifties, with greying hair and spectacles. I wondered how he felt at us being called in and whether he would make things easy or difficult. I did not have long to wait before I found out.

“Doctor Watson!” he beamed at me, as if I was an old friend who he had just not seen for a while. I almost stepped back at the over-effusiveness of the greeting before he elaborated. “I have read your latest book and my friend in England forwards me the 'Strand' magazine as soon as it comes out. I am so pleased that you and the great Mr. Holmes have agreed to investigate our, ahem, difficulty. I only hope that you can attain a solution' it is a most dreadful situation.”

“Please tell us everything that happened”, my friend said as we both took our seats. The Abbot sighed heavily.

“I will get Prior Gustavus to show you the scene of the crime later”, he said, “after we have gone through what little I can tell you. Unfortunately I had just returned from a conference in Moscow when it all happened and was still settling back in.”

“I had left for the conference just over a week ago. The day after my departure ago a man calling himself ‘Mohammed’ came to the Abbey. As you know we have separate worship areas for other religions so nothing much was thought about it when he went into the room reserved for Moslems. The four non-Orthodox areas are locked off from the rest of the abbey and from each other, so he was not disturbed. However, at the end of the day he refused to leave. Prior Gustavus was not pleased but he did not wish to force the issue, so the man was allowed to stay the night.”

“I am surprised that you did not use your men to have him evicted”, I said.

The abbot smiled.

“One of the terms of our being allowed to build in the first place was that the non-Orthodox areas became sanctuaries”, he explained. “That of course became the issue the next day when the man officially claimed the right of sanctuary, which has to be asserted within twenty-four hours of arrival. We are fortunate to have an Arabic speaker amongst the brotherhood so his demands were understood if politically unwelcome. Then he went and got himself _killed!”_

I suppressed a smile at the indignation of the abbot, that someone should be so downright inconsiderate as to allow themselves to be done to death in _his_ abbey! I still got a warning look from Sherlock though. The abbot continued.

“I should explain at this point that there is an old legend which we have been very careful to cultivate that a time long ago, a local official ignored the abbey’s neutrality and tried to break in to seize a prisoner claiming sanctuary inside. He was struck down by lightning the moment that he touched the great door, the Good Lord being not impressed at his impiety. Our neighbours in Odessa have changed several times since then but the Russians have always respected our status and when they wish to talk, they always send a messenger first. One arrived soon after all our visitor came, so as he was in charge of abbey affairs Prior Gustavus went into town.” 

The abbot’s face turned sour. “It turned out that the man was wanted for abducting a young girl and forcing her to go through some sham of a wedding ceremony. He was about forty-five and she was not even ten! That sort of thing is from what I understand thought acceptable in their own religion but of course the girl’s parents who were Christians…. as you can appreciate they were some way beyond furious. Also quite influential in local political circles which of course made matters worse. Fortunately they had got the girl back but they were determined to pursue her abductor.”

“Rightly so”, I said.

“The rules of sanctuary bind me more firmly than any laws of man”, the abbot said sounding almost rueful about that. “The man had twelve days from his claim being made – I know it is forty in the West but things are different here - and if he did not leave at that time then he had to be allowed to leave the country. As you can imagine that is a little difficult here as technically there is no country to leave, but the point is that he could not be challenged when he goes. I understand that the Ottoman Empire offered to take him away by boat if necessary, and the Russians countered by threatening to blockade the abbey if they did. The prior has told me that two Russian ships were patrolling the seas south of here on his return from town, very obviously within sight of our walls. I am sure that we are being monitored from the town as well.”

Sherlock pressed his fingers together.

“Did you return from your conference on time?” he asked. The abbot looked surprised at the question.

“Ahead of time, actually”, he said. “I met a colleague at the conference and he showed me a much faster route home using a railway that I had not known to be completed, so I reached here nearly a day early. Why? Do you think that the killer expected me to still be away?”

“That is possible”, Sherlock mused. “It seems strange that the killing happened at the one time that you were, as you said, settling back in. So to the murder.”

“It was the strangest thing”, the abbot said. “I had a meeting with Prior Gustavus immediately upon my return and we then briefed the senior brothers about our unwelcome guest. Things were particularly tense as the girl’s family had just come to the abbey to worship, as was their right…..”

“Are they all Orthodox Christians?” Sherlock interrupted. The abbot looked surprised again.

“All except one, her elder brother”, he said. “He is of the Jewish persuasion; I believe that he married a Jewess and converted to her faith. It is quite a large family.”

Sherlock smiled knowingly though I did not see why. People were entitled to change their religion if they wished.

“About an hour after dinner”, the abbot continued, “the prior came racing into my room looking most perturbed. Someone had managed to get into the Moslem worship area and had fatally stabbed our guest. This is a calamity of the first order, gentlemen. If we cannot find out who is responsible, there is the terrible possibility that war may be renewed between Moscow and Constantinople.”

“A dreadful prospect”, I agreed. Sherlock seemed lost in thought.

“Is the room where the man was staying completely secure?” my friend asked.

_Was it my imagination, or was there the briefest pause before the abbot answered?_

“Yes”, he said. “The only way off the peninsula is via the causeway and we always have a guard at the door.”

“What rooms adjoin to where the man was?” Sherlock asked.

“It is the second of the four non-Orthodox rooms”, the abbot explained. “The Jewish room is on the north side, and the Catholic room on the south, with the Protestant room beyond that. Yes I did think that, Mr. Holmes, particularly with the girl's brother Frederick having been in the next room around the time of the murder but the doors between all four rooms are always kept locked and only I have the keys.”

“There are no spares?” Sherlock asked.

“One set but they are kept by the porter and the on-duty guard.” On seeing my confused expression he went on, “each of the doors has a double lock; I have two keys that will open each one but they have only one each. The guards change of course but the porter Septimus I would trust with my life.”

“You left your own set in possession of your deputy during your absence, I presume?” Sherlock asked.

The abbot looked decidedly alarmed. 

Yes”, he said warily. “But I had of course retrieved them by the time of the killing. You are not saying.....”

“I am not saying anything yet”, Sherlock cut in. “The dead man presumably had no friends or acquaintances here?”

“An imam from the local mosque came and asked to speak with him”, the abbot said, looking oddly embarrassed at that for some reason, “and he was of course admitted at the gate, but the man refused to let him into the chamber. The rules of sanctuary meant that we could not force the issue. I have to say that I was more than a little suspicious of that imam; he asked the prior what would happen if he too claimed sanctuary but was told that the rules only admitted one claimant for each religion within a fortnight of each applicant's arrival.”

I thought that the abbot had been quite right to be suspicious. Someone had wanted that man silenced, and silenced he had eventually been.

“There is no other way into this room other than the main door and the connecting doors?” Sherlock asked.

“None”, the abbot said firmly.

“Is there a window in the room?” 

“Yes, but it opens out directly onto the sea and there is a considerable drop down a sheer wall.”

Sherlock seemed to think further. I did not like the heavy frown that had appeared on his features.

“I rather think that I should speak with Prior Gustavus”, he said eventually, turning to me. “Doctor, in view of everything that that man must have been through over the last few days it might be better if I saw him alone. I do not wish to upset him even more and I feel he may be intimidated if there are two of us.”

I was a little offended at being excluded like that, and he clearly saw that.

“Perhaps you could stay with the abbot and discuss some of your unwritten cases”, he offered and I noticed our host's eyes light up at the prospect. “I shall not be long.”

He left before I could object further and I turned back to our host. At least I could trust him with some of our thus far unpublished cases. After all he was God's own man.

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The interview with the prior took longer than I had expected although the abbot and I were so busy talking that I only noticed how much time had passed when my friend returned. Sherlock suggested that we should go and examine the scene of the crime so we set off. At the door to the room we were met by someone who was obviously Prior Gustavus, a youngish blond monk who I noted was wearing a wedding-band. Once he had gone and we were inside I commented on this to the abbot, who smiled.

“No doctor, the man is not married”, he said. “His father and brother were both killed in the last war against the Ottomans and it is his brother's ring. We do not of course allow married priests but his sister-in-law does have a young child, his niece, and he is excused certain duties to visit them in Odessa from time to time and help out. She is raising the girl by herself so we do what little we can for her.”

“That is very good of you”, Sherlock said. “Now I have reviewed this case and I am sure that I know what happened. If we can find some more evidence to back that up then a political calamity may be averted. I already have two pieces to be going on with.”

He produced from his pocket a large rock and a small round piece of metal looking a little like a fragment of a bullet, both of which he placed on a table. Neither looked that impressive, if I was being honest.

“What are these?” the abbot asked curiously.

“The rock comes from directly below the window outside”, Sherlock said, gesturing to a large bay window. “You will notice that there is a faint scrape of blue paint against one side. A boat has clearly rubbed up against it for some time, and also quite recently otherwise the tides would have washed it away.”

I gasped.

“The murderer came by sea!” I said. “And the ball?”

“That is typical of ball-bearings used as part of a grappling-hook”, he explained. “The ball rotates in the device; you can see the scratch-marks on it. You will also note that even though it is half missing, what remains is perfectly rounded which was how I recognized it. The next part is more mundane, I am afraid; we will have to check the furniture in this room for scratch marks. Start with the heaviest items first, please.”

We spent about a minute looking before the abbot found something; scratch marks along one leg of the heavy table. 

“They have been polished over”, I observed. “The murderer – or murderess - tried to cover their tracks.”

Sherlock was bent down over by the window and appeared to be placing something inside an envelope. Once he had finished he brought it over for us to see.

“It looks like hair”, the abbot said dubiously.

“Hempen fibres”, Sherlock explained. “From a rope. The murderer gained access by having a rope tied around a table leg and then hoisted themselves into the room that way. I would have expected a wire to the hook but presumably the attacker feared that that would make more noise, although it would have been much easier to use.”

“I still do not see how the attacker got in though”, the abbot objected.

Sherlock looked an him pointedly. There was a short silence.

“Prior Gustavus said that the man was _stabbed”_ , my friend said. “The victim clearly had reason to fear that someone was out to kill him, otherwise he would not have refused a visit from the local imam whose subsequent actions show that those fears may well have been justified. But the victim did not fear his actual killer. He knew him – or as my friend the doctor said, possibly even her - well enough to open the window to them, then to secure the rope to allow them to gain entry and finally – fatally - to let them get close. That was the last mistake he made in this world.”

 _“One of his own people?”_ the abbot gasped. 

“The Ottoman Empire is too weak to afford another war at this time”, Sherlock pointed out, “and this man may well have dragged them into one. They could not risk it.”

“The Russians will be livid!” I said.

“True, but they can do nothing”, Sherlock said. “They will hardly wish to admit that an enemy nation got an assassin into and out of one of their chief ports totally unobserved, even if Trepoff is not technically Russian soil. The embarrassment would be unbearable for them, let alone that it might encourage others to try the same thing elsewhere. No, the whole thing will be brushed under the carpet and quickly forgotten about, probably with a most undiplomatic turn of speed. Probably all for the best.”

I stared down at a faint red stain that even the efforts of the Abbey's cleaners had been so far unable to erase from the stone floor. All that remained of a child abductor who had met a just end. I wondered what he had felt as the man – or woman - who he must have thought had come to spirit him away had instead stabbed him to death.

I may have been a doctor, but I fervently hoped that it had hurt!

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We returned to our hotel in Odessa that evening after having stopped off to find out times of trains to the Crimea. 

“I shall not be able to publish this case”, I said a little ruefully. “At least not for many a year.”

Sherlock looked at me and smiled.

“Indeed”, he said. “But not for the reasons you are thinking, my friend.”

I looked at him in surprise.

“What do you mean?” I asked. 

He went over and locked the door to our room then came back and sat on his bed. He looked serious.

“I mean all that nonsense about a murderer coming and going by boat” he said calmly. “I made it all up.”

I stared at him in shock.

“But..... the evidence!” I spluttered.

“That was why I spent so long with Prior Gustavus”, Sherlock explained. “We had to set things up so that it looked convincing, at least enough to make the authorities stop looking for the real murderer.”

“Who is?” I asked eagerly. He looked at me again.

“Prior Gustavus, for one.”

I all but fell onto my bed and it took some time before I could find my voice.

“But he is a monk!” I said feebly.

“He is also uncle to a child similar in age to the girl who was abducted”, Sherlock said gently. “When this monster took advantage of the Abbey's sanctuary rule, he took it upon himself to act as an agent of justice. His target would never suspect a man of the cloth, would he?” He paused before adding, “you did not.”

My head swam.

“But... the evidence!” I repeated as my world view swam before me.

“Anyone can scrape some coloured wood against a rock”, he said, “and scratch a table then polish over it. Then plant some rope fibres and half a ball-bearing at the scene of a crime.”

I suddenly spotted a flaw in his logic.

“Aha!” I shouted, triumphantly if perhaps inelegantly. “When he was stabbed he would have screamed out. And we know the room next door was occupied by the girl's elder brother. He would have heard!”

Sherlock shook his head sadly.

“You are forgetting that the abbot had been away right up to when this happened”, he said gently. “Prior Gustavus was left in charge of the abbey and hence had the keys. In all the confusion it would have been easy either to slip the necessary keys off the ring, or have even have had a copy made, although that might have been more difficult. However he did it, he was able to unlock the connecting door to allow the brother in.”

“But the victim would still have called out”, I objected. 

“The rules of sanctuary meant that the abbey had to provide a minimum supply of food and water to their unwanted 'guest”, he reminded me. “I very much doubt that there were many volunteers for such a task. It was easy for Prior Gustavus to drug that food so that the man was semi-conscious, after which he admitted the girl's brother. I am sure that as they gave the victim his quietus they told him just why they were ridding the world of him. The abbot's early return was annoying but it did not frustrate the mills of justice.”

I huffed a laugh.

“What is it?” my friend asked, clearly surprised at my reaction.

“It's just that once again we seem to be conniving at letting a murderer – two in this case – go free.”

Sherlock moved until he was sitting directly opposite me and took my hands in his.

“It is like Captain Feher”, he said seriously. “If, years ago, you had found someone doing something like that to someone you loved – what would your reaction have been?”

I didn't even need to think about it. Anyone who had hurt Sherlock – or Stevie - in any way like that would have needed the services of a funeral director very soon. And as a doctor I knew several ways of killing that were pretty much undetectable. I nodded.

“You are right”, I said. “Let us hope that we can make it through the battlefields of the Crimea without your finding another murder that needs solving!”

We did – but......

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_Notes:_  
_† Now Brașov, Romania._

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	12. Case 134: A Scandal In Bohemia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1888\. A murder that Sherlock solved before he even went to the town in which it took place - although not perhaps to his client's complete satisfaction.

_[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D.]_

I enjoyed my tour of the battlefields of the Crimea bringing life to such familiar names as Balaclava and Sebastopol, and I really enjoyed our plush hotel in the latter town with its adjoining rooms and huge, luxurious bathrooms – gold taps! - and excellent service. And when Sherlock smiled at me across his mound of his (all right, and my) bacon I felt that I could not possibly be happier. Yet despite all this I found that I was missing our Baker Street home more and more. 

I was still plucking up the courage to broach the subject with my friend until one day he suddenly turned to me and said simply, “London?”

“Oh yes!” I said, perhaps a little too fervently. 

My fears that I might be pushing my friend into an earlier than planned departure were swiftly proved groundless as he had provisionally arranged a return schedule to recross the Continent with stopovers in Kraków and Dresden followed by a night ferry from Rotterdam. I must admit that I was torn over the former; I had always held an admiration for the plucky Poles who had been so badly handled by their more powerful neighbours, but I really wanted to be back in Baker Street as soon as possible and to see the sodden mists of an English winter outside my windows while I was toasty warm by my fire with my friend close by my side. I discussed this with Sherlock and he suggested spending one full day in Poland (i.e. two nights at the hotel). 

Thanks to the efficacy of the modern telegraph system I would come to regret that particular decision. On the other hand I would get to see my friend once more solve a case in a town without even (technically) going anywhere near where it had happened, just as he had done in our third case a certain number of years ago.

Shut up!

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Today (1936) Poland† is once more a nation state although with a wary eye to the ever-greedy Russians (now the dreadful Communist Union of Soviet Socialist Republics‡) to the east and the belligerent Germans under the maniacal Herr Hitler to the west. In those far-off days however the inaptly-named Grand Duchy of Kraków was the sole faintly flickering beacon of Polish freedom, the town having been very begrudgingly granted a smidgeon of extra autonomy out on the eastern march of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In area it was about three-quarters the size of the county of Hertfordshire or barely a quarter of the size of the smallest of the United States, Rhode Island, so it was not that 'grand'.

I enjoyed our day there but it was marred when Sherlock and I returned exhausted to our hotel to find a telegram. I shuddered when he told me it was from his obnoxious lounge-lizard of a brother. It could not be good news. 

It was not.

“Randall wants me to investigate a matter in a town called Lobositz, in the north of Bohemia”, he told me. “Fortunately it is not out of our way; the place is on the railway line between Prague and Dresden, up which we are to travel anyway. He wants me to meet someone involved with the case in Prague after which they will take us there.”

“He takes too much advantage of you”, I growled. Sherlock smiled at me.

“You would do anything for your brother”, he pointed out.

“Yes, but Stevie is no Randall”, I countered, feeling mulish. “I just do not like the fellow.”

“I do not think that he likes you much either”, Sherlock said. “He thinks you are a bad influence on me, using your writings to exploit me and make money out of my abilities.”

I opened my mouth to voice just what I thought of that, but just in time caught the twinkle in my friend's blue eyes. I scowled.

“I hate you!” I not-pouted. He just gave me the kicked puppy expression and I sighed. I was putty in his hands, damnation!

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We checked out of our hotel in Kraków and some hours later arrived safely at the main station in beautiful Prague. There we booked ourselves into the station hotel where Mr. Randall Holmes had already reserved us rooms (at opposite ends of the hotel I noted, which Sherlock quickly corrected and I was still feeling put out at the use of my friend's talents while he was supposed to be on holiday). Herr Franz Strüchen, the contact that the lounge-lizard wanted us to meet, was apparently already in the city, but as it was already after seven o' clock when we arrived Sherlock refused to see him until the following morning. He also told me that the gentleman was a friend of a relative of the prime minister Marquess of Salisbury, which I suppose made him of some importance. But he could still wait for the morrow.

A card sent up with our breakfast the following morning told us that Herr Strüchen was waiting downstairs to see us despite the ungodly hour of the morning. Since it turned out that his brother was paying for everything, Sherlock ordered a double helping of extra bacon, and the way those blue eyes lit up and what was virtually half a pig on a plate was a joy to behold, especially when he tried as was his wont to cram several pieces into his mouth at once. Of course he had brought his own bottles of Heinz Tomato Ketchup without which he deemed any bacon-fest incomplete.

I was so lucky to have him in my life!

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Herr Strüchen was, it turned out, the mayor of Lobositz. He was a portly fellow in his late forties, pale-skinned and white-blond, and seemed pathetically grateful that we had come to his assistance. Clearly whatever recent horror had enabled him to call upon the services of Mr. Randall Holmes must have been bad as he was shaking slightly as we met. I fervently hoped that Sherlock could solve his mystery quickly whatever it was.

“This, Mr. Holmes, is a case of _murder most foul!”_ the mayor began. “And in my own home, to boot!”

His English was, I noted, quite excellent with barely a hint of an accent. Although even I would not have been mentally stretched to work out just who had eaten all the pies! 

“Terrible”, Sherlock muttered, looking sharply at me for some reason. “Please begin at the beginning sir and leave no detail out, no matter how small or inconsequential it may seem.”

“It all happened five days ago”, the mayor said, “at the mayoral ball. I had just been invested for another year and it was decided to hold a costume ball to mark the start of my fourth term in office which.....”

“You say that 'it was decided'”, Sherlock interrupted. “By whom, pray?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Who decided to have the party'” Sherlock asked.

The mayor had to think about that for some time.

“My daughter Barbara”, he said at last. Then he went pale. “Mr. Holmes, you do not think…..”

I rarely _think_ ”, Sherlock said smoothly. “I prefer to _know_ , as it makes life infinitely simpler. It is possible that if this was part of whatever happened, then someone could quite easily have suggested the idea to your daughter or even a close friend of hers, knowing that she would be easily able to persuade you. Is she your only daughter?”

The man nodded.

“Yes”, he said. “I have three sons; Frederick, Albert and Ernest, but I would do anything for dear Barbara.”

“Please continue with your story”, Sherlock said. The mayor shook himself.

“The events of the evening revolve around four gentlemen who adjourned to an upstairs room for some quiet smoking-time”, he said. “We do not have an official smoking-room as my wife most unfortunately loathes the practice, but she allows it for special events. The gentlemen left the main party at around eight; the dancing had just begun and the band were….”

 _“Dramatis personae_ if you please”, Sherlock cut in. I could see why; the mayor seemed prone to ramble.

“My eldest son Frederick is twenty-three years of age”, the mayor said. “Then there is Mr. Marcus Daventry, twenty-eight, the son and heir of my English friend Lord Daventry, the Marquis of Dunsmore. Lord Peter is also an acquaintance of your brother, Mr. Holmes, which is how he became involved.”

_(The Marquis of Dunsmore, a cross-bencher and an excellent public speaker, commanded great respect in the House of Lords at this time, and his opposition had already cost the government one bill. Another reason that the oleaginous Mr. Randall Holmes was involved in this matter, worse luck)._

“Then there is Mr. James Barking”, the mayor continued, “Mr. Daventry’s thirty-one-year-old companion and travelling partner. Finally the victim Herr Wilhelm St. Moritz, the twenty-seven-year-old son of one of the chief merchants in the area. His father lives next door but one to me.”

Sherlock stared pointedly at the mayor, who trembled under his azure gaze. I wondered why until he suddenly started off again.

“Young Wilhelm had had what one might call ‘an understanding’ with my daughter”, he said ruefully. “The romance of the girl next door is a cliché but it does happen. However when the Englishmen arrived in town two weeks ago, Barbara decided… well…..”

He tailed off, clearly embarrassed. I jotted down the words 'offer' and 'better', not in that order.

“Let us resume your _fascinating_ narration of the evening’s events”, Sherlock said, shaking his head at me for some reason. “Pray continue.”

The mayor seemed grateful for being saved from that particular line of questioning. As would I have been.

“Wilhelm was seen by Frederick in the garden about an hour later”, he continued, “and about an hour after that my wife saw him crossing the balcony above the main hall and called out to him as she was ascending the stairs with her companion Miss Short. Much to her surprise he ignored her - I might suppose that he could not hear her over the music which was a little loud - and knocked at one of the bedroom doors.”

“Whose door?” Sherlock asked.

“That of my third son, Ernest”, the mayor said. “He is away studying in Dresden just now; he was invited back but chose not to come as he has an important examination approaching.”

“That was fortunate for your son”, Sherlock observed. “Was the room occupied by anyone else?”

The mayor stared at him in confusion.

“No”, he said. “Why would it have been?”

“Herr St. Moritz presumably knew that your son was absent”, Sherlock explained, “which implies that he had an assignation with someone in that room. You said that your wife was ascending the stairs at the time. For what reason?”

Herr Strüchen looked distinctly uncomfortable.

“She wished to change her jewellery”, he said. “She has this large necklace which is gaudy and expensive; she loves it but it is very heavy to wear for a long period of time.”

I personally thought that rather weak but Sherlock indicated that he should continue, which again he was clearly glad to do.

“Wilhelm went into the room; my wife turned back to her companion and carried on up the stairs continuing to her room which lay in the other direction. About three to five minutes passed then there was the sound of a gun being fired twice in quick succession, from the room that Wilhelm had gone into. Everyone froze for a moment then of course most of the gentlemen rushed up the stairs; there was quite a log-jam. Mr. Barking reached the door first – he had been descending the stairs when the first shot had happened - and he found it locked but he managed to break it down with one charge. By the time the rest of us got there he was holding poor Wilhelm's body. The man was clearly dead.”

“One moment”, Sherlock put in. “You said that Mr. Barking entered the room first. How long did he reach Herr St. Moritz before everyone else?”

The mayor looked puzzled.

“Probably no more than half a minute”, he said. “The stairs split halfway up and the turns at the top are also rather tight. But the bullets had already been fired at that point.”

“Correction”, Sherlock said primly. “You had heard two bullets being fired and subsequently found a man who had been shot.”

The mayor looked perplexed. I knew how he felt. _And someone's nodding was just annoying!_

“I should also add that there was one thing of interest in the room”, the mayor said. “Or just outside it; the window out onto the balcony was open and there was a muddy footprint on the balcony railing. The constable who called round later that evening also found marks that indicated a rope had been tied around one of the balcony pillars.”

“A smart fellow if he noticed that”, Sherlock observed. “Did the footprint match with the foot size of any of the three men?”

“Only Mr. Barking's”, the mayor said. “The other two had larger feet. But it was definitely a poor quality shoe, very worn and not the sort of thing that a gentleman of Mr. Barking's quality would be wearing.”

I stared curiously at the mayor.

“This seems too obvious”, I said suspiciously. “Why did the constable not arrest Mr. Barking, or at least ask him to remain under your custody?”

“Because we were able to rule him out immediately”, the mayor said, sounding almost rueful. “The doctor who examined the body of the victim noticed some unusual bruising on his, Mr. Barking’s, body, and asked about it. The man claimed that he suffered from a disease which makes his bones more brittle than usual. Not so that it imposes on his daily life but there are certain activities – including firing any weapon – which would be beyond him. Mr. Daventry confirmed this and I understand that the police also checked it via the telegraphic system. Which leaves my own son and an English lord. We can have either a family catastrophe or an international incident!”

He looked so down that I felt like laughing, however inappropriate that would have been. Fortunately I did not. I still got a warning look though, which was just unfair!

“Where were these two men at the time that the body was found?” Sherlock asked.

“The local constable asked that”, the mayor said distastefully. “Mr. Daventry was walking alone in the garden and Frederick was, ahem, in the water closet.”

“What about your daughter?” Sherlock asked. The mayor frowned but answered the question.

“She was resting in her own bedroom, which is two doors down. Naturally she was horrified by all this. The doctor gave her a sedative for the shock.”

“You say that this was a costume ball”, Sherlock said. “What did each of these people come as?”

The mayor frowned at the question.

“Really Mr. Holmes, I do not see the relevance….”

“Humour me”, Sherlock pressed. The mayor sighed in a put-upon way.

“Frederick came as D’Artagnan, one of Dumas's Musketeers”, he said, frowning as he tried to remember. “All ruffs and bows; he nearly caught fire when he stood too close to one of the candles, the fool boy! Mr. Daventry came as a pirate in quite a good costume, parrot and all. Mr. Barking came as Shakespeare's Falstaff for which he most definitely had the figure. Wilhelm came as King Frederick the Second of Prussia, which was tactless of him. But then he rarely 'did' tact.”

Sherlock looked at me expectantly.

“There are some¶ in that region who would rather prefer it to be part of Prussian Germany than Austria-Hungary”, I explained, “and that king was the archetypal Prussian expansionist. It would be rather like attending a Scottish party dressed as King Edward the First.”

Sherlock nodded and turned back to the mayor.

“Your daughter's costume?” he asked. The mayor blushed fiercely.

“She came dressed as a cat-burglar”, he muttered, clearly mortified at the memory. “Had I known beforehand I would have flatly forbidden it, but she only came down once several of the guests had arrived, and of course many of them – or at least all the gentlemen – admired her costume greatly. It was _most_ indecent!”

I suppressed a smile.

“Tell us what happened in and after the smoking-room”, Sherlock urged, rolling his eyes at me for some reason.

“The gentlemen had gone up around eight as I said, and spent an hour in the room smoking and talking. Barbara went in to join them – again not something I approve of but she is I am afraid rather modern - around a quarter to nine. There was apparently some mild altercation between Wilhelm and Mr. Daventry over her affections when she entered but Mr. Barking – who later mentioned it to me - managed to smooth things over. It ended with Barbara and Wilhelm adjourning to a private room to, ahem, discuss matters.”

Sherlock frowned. 

“What are your eldest son’s feelings on this matter?” he asked.

The mayor reddened.

“Mr. Holmes, I….”

“Herr Strüchen, I am effectively a doctor of science”, Sherlock said patiently. “You would not go to a doctor of medicine like Watson here, only provide him with half of your symptoms, then expect an accurate diagnosis. As I said earlier I need _all_ the facts, even those that you yourself may consider irrelevant. Please answer the question.”

The fellow sighed.

“Frederick was angry with Barbara for changing her mind”, he said. “He thought Wilhelm to be a perfectly good match even though he is seven years older than my daughter. He thought – and, I am afraid, came out and said – that Barbara was only after Mr. Daventry for his money and social standing. She did not like that at all!”

 _Mainly because it was true_ , I thought but did not say. Judging from my friend’s heavy silence and that slight but still annoying nod, he felt the same way. 

“When the doctor examined the body, did he say anything?” Sherlock asked at last.

“He thought that the man may have been lying down when he was shot!” the mayor snorted. “Not for the first time I have doubts about our Doctor Henkel; I thought that maybe he had had one too many beers!”

“On the contrary”, Sherlock said. “Your doctor is not only highly observant but he was quite correct in his assessment. Tell me, which rooms adjoin your youngest son's bedroom?”

“To the left is a spare bedroom which Barbara's friends use when they come over”, the mayor said, looking puzzled at Sherlock's praise for his doctor. “My second son Albert who is visiting a friend in Bonn has the room on the other side. The doors to both are not usually locked.”

My friend sighed, sounding almost unhappy.

“I have another question”, he said eventually, “and it is extremely important so take your time, I need you to describe the physical appearances of all five characters in this story.”

The mayor nodded.

“Frederick is very tall – he gets that from his mother – blond and muscular. He is considering a career in the army and I am sure that he would do very well, as he can be aggressive when pushed but can also take orders. Mr. Barking, as I said earlier the archetypal Falstaff, could benefit from losing about thirty pounds if not fifty. He is dark-haired and rather plain, but of a pleasant enough character. Mr. Daventry is short, blond, has a long nose and is extremely muscular; I believe that he is highly skilled in one of the eastern fighting arts though I do not know which one. He is not really 'as ugly as sin' as my wife claims, but I have to concur with her that Dunsmore Hall may well be his most attractive feature. Wilhelm was dark-haired, slightly below average height and very slim. He was one of those people who could seem to eat anything and never put on weight.”

I eyed the mayor's more than ample girth and bit back a catty remark. Sherlock of course shot me another warning look. I blushed.

“Your daughter?” he pressed. The mayor frowned.

“She is petite, almost frail, has black hair and is a little below average height”, he said. “Mr. Holmes I do not see the point of this.”

Sherlock sighed heavily.

“Perhaps it would have been nice to visit your little town, Herr Strüchen”, he said with a wan smile, “but the doctor and I really should be getting back to England.”

“But the case!” the mayor spluttered.

“The case is solved”, Sherlock said quietly.

“How?” the mayor demanded. “Which of those men did it?”

“Neither of them”, Sherlock said. “I am sorry sir, but there is no easy way to break this to you. Herr Wilhelm St. Moritz was murdered by your daughter, Barbara.”

The man gasped. I was sure that he would have collapsed had he not been sat down.

“Sir I must protest!” he managed.

“I will tell you why, first”, Sherlock said. “I am only uncertain as to one matter in this case and that is precisely how far the relationship between your daughter and Herr St. Moritz had proceeded before she had decided to accept the suit of Mr. Daventry. I would hope that a child is not involved….”

The mayor had suddenly gone deathly pale.

“… but I think it more likely that Herr St. Moritz merely had some sort of written understanding which would have rendered it impossible for Mr. Daventry to pursue his suit. Let us pray that that is indeed the case.”

There was no alcohol immediately to hand but I belatedly remembered my hip-flask, and poured the entire contents into a glass before offering it to the stunned mayor. He downed in one shot and a little colour returned to his cheeks.. 

“I happen to know a little of the current Marquis of Dunsmore”, Sherlock said, “and for all that he is a good politician and a noted philanthropist, he is extremely set in his ways. I am certain that as your daughter swiftly realized, he would disinherit his son if he had tried to form a union with a lady already destined for another, regardless of the legal niceties involved, and that it would have been easy for a disgruntled Herr St. Moritz to send him the written proof of their Understanding. Although Marcus is his only son the Marquis does have three nephews one of whom who would, I am sure, step up if asked. But if the gentleman that the lady in question was betrothed to had died – _or had been killed_ – then that would have been quite different.”

“Barbara would never do anything like that!” the mayor objected. Sherlock shook his head.

“After the _contretemps_ in the presence of the other gentlemen she withdraws with Herr St. Moritz, most probably to the empty bedroom next to her own, and persuades him to drink something that will knock him out”, he said. “This is I am sorry to say the most unfortunate part because what comes next shows that there was considerable premeditation. She has secured the keys to the house so the room that she uses is locked while the connecting doors to your youngest son's room and through to her own room are both unlocked. She then dons the Frederick the Great costume over her own and slips back into the party for an hour or so, but is careful not to speak to anybody lest her voice give her away.”

“How can you know all this?” the mayor asked, aghast.

“You described the costumes and build of each player in this drama”, Sherlock explained. “The only person who could have doubled for Herr St. Moritz for any length of time had to have had a similar build and also had to have had an outfit over which another costume could have been easily worn. You may have disapproved of her cat burglar outfit but now you can see the reason for it; another costume could easily have been worn over it. Also, the shots that killed the victim had to have been fired from extremely close range otherwise they would have been heard, so the killer was well known to the victim.”

“But we did hear the shots”, the mayor objected. Sherlock shook his head.

“It was your daughter, disguised as her victim whom she had dispatched over an hour before, who made sure that ‘Frederick the Great’ was seen to enter the fatal room at a time when Herr St. Moritz was about an hour dead. It takes her only a few minutes to remove her second costume and to re-dress the corpse in it. She then shoots her victim twice which is why he was indeed lying down when shot; your doctor was quite correct in his assessment. She knew that from the gunshots she would have barely a minute to make her escape through the connecting door which she does, locking it behind her.”

“But what about proof?” I asked. “If she denies it, a jury may well believe her.”

Sherlock looked pityingly at the mayor.

“I think that if the police analyse her costume closely enough”, he said, “they will find traces of the king's costume that she wore over it for at least an hour. Similarly there may be threads of her costume on the _inside_ of her victim's one, neither of which she would be able to explain away. There may also be gunshot residue on her hands; no amount of washing will truly remove it although I am sure that she has tried. A closer examination of the body will likely show that the victim was shot some time _after_ death, as at the time the doctor was doubtless told that the man had been alive just seconds before he was shot. That examination may also yield evidence of the drug that he was given which would preclude his having been the person your wife saw entering the room.”

“My daughter is a killer”, the mayor said heavily.

“I am sorry”, my friend said sincerely. “But there can be no doubt in the matter.”

The man seemed to pull himself together.

“Thank you for your time, Mr. Holmes”, he said. “Your brother was right. You are indeed an agent of justice, not just the law.”

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We had a day in Prague which I still managed to enjoy, despite my feeling sorry for the poor Herr Strüchen. We resumed our journey the following day and Sherlock did not even look up from his paper when our train rattled through Lobositz Station en route to Dresden. I too had had enough of the Continent (although I happy with what it had given me, even if the fellow had purloined all my bacon that morning), and we had already decided to forgo the German city in order to head for home as quickly as possible. 

Thankfully we made good time to Rotterdam in order to catch the night ferry to England. There was a telegram waiting for Sherlock there and he sighed as he read it.

“Miss Barbara Strüchen has left the family home in Lobositz”, he said. “Alone.”

“Better a life on the road than a length of rope”, I suggested.”I pity any man who is foolish enough to get too close to that lady.”

He nodded as we went to a restaurant to kill the few hours before the ferry sailed. We were nearly home.

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_Notes:_  
_† A very different Poland to the one of the early twenty-first century, as it comprised a large part of what would later be the western Ukraine but did not include most of western half of the modern country. This latter area was awarded as 'compensation' to the Poles after World War Two when the Soviet Union kept the former area that it had seized in 1939._  
_‡ Watson was writing just three years after the Holodomor, the USSR's use of a grain famine to starve between three and twelve million ethnic Ukrainians to death. This was largely unreported in the West and almost completely ignored by the world's media except for 'journalists' Walter Duranty and Louis Fischer, both of whom publicly denied its existence._  
_¶ In the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire after the First World War, the country of Czechoslovakia (now Czechia and Slovakia) was formed as a bulwark against future German aggression. Its core was the provinces of Bohemia, Moravia and Slovakia, but to afford it defensible borders a long stretch of mostly German-speaking lands around the north, west and south of Bohemia were added on. These peoples, wishing to have federated with Berlin, started calling themselves the Sudeten (southern) Germans and in 1938 they got their wish courtesy of the spineless British prime minister Neville Chamberlain who handed the area over to Hitler provided he promised, pinky swear, not to take the rest of Czechoslovakia. After the resulting Second World War over ninety-five per cent of the Germans living in Czechoslovakia were expelled, the Czechs not trusting them for some strange, inexplicable reason._

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	13. Case 135: The Adventure Of The Tide-Waiter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1888\. Before the duo can even reach English soil, a tide-waiter sets the dynamic duo off on the trail of a brother of his who is doing suspiciously well in London – how, exactly? And shock horror – Sherlock actually makes a mistake!

_[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D.]_

Foreword: In the fast-paced world of the thirties only older generations like my own will recognize the job title in this story. Back when ships had to wait for high tide to dock at some ports, a tide-waiter was a customs official who would take advantage of that delay to board and complete customs checks on those who needed it, thus enabling people to be more quickly on their way once the ship had docked. Superior harbours and ships have today rendered the post obsolete, although when the docks in this story were so improved in 1897, the gentleman that we met there in this case was re-employed in another capacity.

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I had hoped that the brief delay caused to our return home to Baker Street by the Bohemian Scandal would have been it and that we could have made it home without any more misadventures. It was not to be, but I did get to see something I thought that I would never witness – Sherlock actually making a mistake! And even better, someone that I disliked suffering as a result! Double score!

I am in my room with the door locked, so he cannot use his kicked puppy look on me any time soon! Hah!

In the few short hours between our arrival in Rotterdam and our boat's departure to Sheerness, the English Channel managed to brew up one of those storms for which it is justifiably infamous. With only an hour to go before our departure I could see our ship rising and falling at the quayside even in the shelter of the harbour. I winced at the thought of putting my poor stomach through a crossing in that.

I should have known better. Sherlock suggested that we instead spend a night in the town and, if the storm had not ceased by the morning, make for Calais since most storms travelled up the Channel (i.e. from west to east) so it would clear that port first. Plus going from there would have the added advantage of a shorter crossing for which my stomach was most appreciative. Sure enough the storm did not abate so we set off and made it to the former English possession safely enough, although it was full three days before the seas were tranquil enough to to make the crossing to Dover and home. I was so close that I could almost smell Mrs. Hudson's delicious breakfast!

It will likely be engraved on my tombstone: 'He really, _really_ should have known better'.

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As our ship passed those wonderfully familiar white cliffs and approached to within sight of Dover's mighty castle, we awaited high tide so that we could dock. Almost immediately a customs boat drew alongside and I sighed; some bumptious, overbearing Nosy Parker who, because someone had made the mistake of giving him a suit with shiny buttons, thinks that he has the right to delay an Englishman going about his business. I only hoped that they would question those of foreign appearance and leave us alone, xenophobic though that probably was. But I was tired, so close to dear England's soil and just wanted to be home so that I could cu..... hold Sherlock in my arms in our own rooms.

The first official, a short scrawny chap who looked as if a strong wind would blow him over the side (all right, that may have been wishful thinking on my part!) looked at our passports as if he could not believe what he was seeing.

 _“You're_ Mr. Sherlock Holmes?” he said incredulously. 

I suppose that I could understand his disbelief. Sherlock liked to go outside during sea-crossings with the result that his now normally smart appearance devolved back to Early Years Scarecrow as I called it. He looked less the great detective and more like someone who had been blown off the nearby cliff-top and had then been fortunate enough to have landed on the ship.

“I am”, Sherlock said politely. “Is there a problem, sir?”

The fellow looked between us, then surprised us both with a fair turn of speed along the deck to where the other officer was at work. I could clearly see the head and shoulders of this behemoth; he had to be prodigiously tall as he towered above those around him.

“'Harry!” the first officer yelled at him. “He's here! Flippin' Mr. Sherlock Holmes!”

I glared skywards. Someone up there owed me for what was certainly about to befall us.

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It was a short time later and, annoyingly, our nice, warm, fast train to London had departed from the harbour station without us. We were sat in a small office which was filled with the second customs officer, who turned out to be almost as broad in the shoulder as he was tall. There was not an ounce of fat on him, and I remember thinking that he would have looked more at home in a Viking longboat that in a dingy customs office, an observation of mine which I have to record was quite correct; we later learned that the fellow's family was indeed of Viking stock. 

See? I _was_ right some of the time. And Sherlock really needed to get something for that cough of his.

“Name's Harold Godfreyson, sir”, the giant rumbled. He had to be in his early twenties at most but there was nothing boyish about his very solid appearance. “I wrote to you a month or so ago but got a reply back that you were out of the country and it weren't known when you'd be back.”

I was sure that someone up there hated me at times. London had been so close, and now this!

“How may we be of assistance?” Sherlock asked politely (as always the 'we' made me feel a little better, as I am sure he had known it would).

“It's about that brother of mine”, the behemoth said. “We're a large family – there's seven of us all told, four boys and three girls – and Sweyn the eldest, well... he's maybe in a spot of bother.”

“What sort of 'bother'?” Sherlock asked. “And why 'maybe'?”

The fellow scratched his blond thatch. 

“Don't rightly know, sir”, he admitted. “He had an argument with our dad when he turned eighteen some ten years back and stormed out the house saying he was going to London to make his fortune. I haven't heard from him since.”

“Then how do you know that he is in trouble?” Sherlock asked patiently. It was like pulling teeth, I thought but did not say given the size of the fellow before us.

“He writes to Magnus – next down after him – once in a while”, the man said. “And he's in touch with Chris, the youngest. Mother's been fretting a lot lately what with dad being ill and she's even said she may go up to the smoke to see him.” He blushed. “I'm not explaining it very well, am I sirs?”

“Your job is akin in some ways to that of the doctor here”, Sherlock said, much to my surprise. “Both depend to a certain extent on using human intuition to make up for what can sometimes be a dearth of factual evidence. Clearly you sense that something is wrong and, given the nature of your job then some piece of evidence has, whether consciously or subconsciously, triggered an alarm bell. I think that I might speak to your brothers. Are they available?”

“Not here, sir”, he said. “Magnus lives in Canterbury with his wife and family while Chris works in the docks in Chatham. He's single.”

I groaned inwardly. We would never get to London at this rate!

Sherlock nodded and stood up. I assumed that we were going to leave but he seemed oddly fascinated by some sort of chart on the wall. He turned to the tide-waiter.

“That is your duty roster, is it not?” he asked. For some reason the man blushed.

“Uh..... yes, sir.”

Sherlock stepped closer to the chart and looked at it for some little time before turning slowly back to the man. Harold Godfreyson had to be nearly six inches taller, double that broader and at least a couple of stones heaver than my friend, but bigger men than him would have backed away from that look. I half expected him to make a break for the door. Or the wall, which was nearer.

“As far as I recall”, Sherlock said coolly, “only three people apart from our good selves knew about our imminent return to London. After our Bohemian adventure I made it quite clear to both Guilford and Randall that they were not to reveal our whereabouts for anything short of an apocalypse until we had reached home, and Luke is smart enough to know better. _Which one was it?”_

The man gulped. 

“D.... d.... don't rightly know, sir”, he said, his voice having climbed at least an octave and his breathing suddenly irregular. “I had a second letter back and it said you would be headed this way. That was all, honest!”

The look continued. Mr. Harold Godfreyson actually whined!

“It.... it was signed pretty badly, sir”, he said his voice now almost pleading. “Something starting with a 'C' or a 'G'. I.... I..... I really don't know....”.”

My friend continued to stare at the fellow for a while then a slow smile creased his features. It was the sort of smile that made me offer up a prayer, not for the first or the last time, that Mr. Sherlock Holmes had never taken up a life of crime. For that smile was pure evil!

“Very well”, he growled. “I shall still help you in this matter, Mr. Godfreyson, as I must say that it quite intrigues me. I shall 'deal' with my brother later.”

I made a mental note to check the 'Times' obituary pages for the few days after our return. You never knew your luck! Although I did know that 'someone' was giving me a look just then, even though I was right behind him. Harrumph!

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It was the London, Chatham & Dover Railway, one of the things about England that I had not missed, that managed to get us to the ancient home of the English Church despite being behind an engine that frankly should have been in a museum if not a scrapyard. Fortunately the address that the giant tide-waiter had given us (with a shaking hand I had noticed, until Sherlock had re-iterated that he did not hold him responsible for what had happened) was close to the station. 

Mr. Magnus Godfreyson lived in a smart little terraced house that opened out directly onto the road. He was we had been told a builder and fittingly enough was built along the same massive lines as his elder brother although with brown rather than fair hair. I began to feel sorry for poor their mother wherever she was, having to had to push out such strapping boys.

_(Incredibly, I would later learn that all four boys had been premature and severely underweight. They had each and every one of them made up for it since!)_

Sherlock looked around the room curiously, and seemed to find the small writing-desk worthy of far more attention that it deserved before sitting down with our host.

“Harry is fretting over nothing, as always!” Mr. Magnus Godfreyson scoffed when Sherlock told him why we were there. “A worry-wart he is, and always has been. Sweyn's doing fine in London; he just isn't the sort to write letters every five minutes.”

“Your family does not seem the sort to skip familial obligations”, Sherlock observed dryly. “Your brother stated that your mother is increasingly concerned about him, especially after her husband's illness. She is thinking of going up to London for a surprise visit.”

I saw it. A small but definite reaction. 

“We're supporting mother to find her a nice place by the sea now she's getting on in years”, our host said, recovering quickly. “There's seven of us so it's no burden. I can ask Sweyn to write her but he's got a memory like a sieve.”

Sherlock tilted his head to one side and looked curiously at our host.

“I am going to ask you a somewhat personal question, Mr, Godfreyson”, he said. “Your business marches well?”

The man looked surprised but answered.

“Yes”, he said. “We have a contract for repairs up at the cathedral which is pretty much an all-year round job given the size of the place. Not on the cathedral itself of course, just the outbuildings, but there's plenty of those.”

Sherlock pressed his long fingers together and thought for a moment, then smiled.

“We have taken up too much of your valuable time, sir”, he smiled. “Thank you for seeing us. Good day.”

He swept from the house and I followed him. He went so fast that he disappeared for a moment around the corner of the terrace block and I nearly ran into him when I rounded it too.

“Watch!” he grinned.

Sure enough Mr. Magnus Godfreyson bustled out of his door just moments after us, checked briefly to see if we were still around then all but ran down the street to the post-office.

“He is warning his brother”, I said watching the man go inside.

“In a way”, Sherlock smiled.

I sighed. What did I see in him? Well, I was stuck with him now.

_Thankfully!_

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Sherlock said that we would have time to look around the cathedral as the train he wished to catch did not leave for a couple of hours. He went to send a telegram of his own before rejoining me. I greatly enjoyed the ancient building though I wondered what old Augustine would have made of the way things had turned out in the country he had reluctantly gone to, and for that matter what he would make of us. Then it was back to the dreaded London, Chatham & Dover, and hoping for something a bit better than Stephenson's 'Rocket' this time round. 

“What was your interest in that horrible writing-desk?” I asked as we sat down in our compartment.

“Not so much the desk but what was protruding from one of the draws in it”, he said. “Two bank transfer receipts.”

“He is a businessman”, I pointed out. Sherlock shook his head.

“Like railway tickets, many such receipts are unique in colour and design”, he said. “The ones in his drawer are from a very private London bank which Mr. Magnus Godfreyson would have no reason to deal with as a Kentish builder, so his brother Sweyn is sending him money presumably for their mother. Furthermore this Sweyn is very well off yet his brother did not mention his source of income, although from his reaction to the threat of an unannounced parental visit he must surely be aware of it.”

I sighed. I might be on land but mentally I was as usual all at sea. Oh well, at least it was a mental and very flat sea.

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After a ride that seemed interminable we reached the naval port of Chatham; at least we were going in the right direction for London. We were fortunate in that Mr. Christian Godfreyson too lived a little over a mile from his nearest station and a cab soon whisked us to another terraced house, as well-maintained as the first. And another huge hulk of a man, this time with strawberry blond curly hair that looked boyish when compared to his elder brothers. He was not pleased to see us.

“Gentlemen like yourselves shouldn't be digging up what's best left alone”, he said sourly. 

“So if your mother decided to call on your eldest brother unexpectedly?” Sherlock asked and I noted how pale the fellow went at those words. “What do you think _she_ would have to say? Would not the shock be quite dreadful?”

The man stared at us uncertainly.

“I suspect”, Sherlock said with a slight smile, “that this case hinges a lot around the concept of morality. If you deal honestly with me Mr. Godfreyson, then I can help you in your little game. But I need that address.”

“What address?” I asked.

“The molly-house”, Sherlock said simply.

I stared at him in shock. Our host sighed.

“Molly-houses, plural”, he said unhappily. “He works as a trainee manager, running a whole heap of the things. And you wonder why we keep him away from Mother?”

“Give me his address”, Sherlock smiled, “and as I said, I will help you. Otherwise.... if your mother does decide on a sudden trip to London without telling you, we all know that the Fates will ensure that she finds out. I doubt that she would be overly happy.”

The man shuddered but took a piece of paper and wrote an address on it. Sherlock took and read it and I caught him frowning for some reason. I wondered why.

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I was more than a little surprised when our cab dropped us off by a small park not far from Baker Street. It was already dark, and this was London.

“I wanted a short walk to our destination”, Sherlock said, and he looked oddly awkward for some reason. “I am afraid that I may have done a rather foolish thing.”

“What is that?” I asked.

“I assumed from Mr. Harold Godfreyson's words that Guilford was the person who informed him of my change of plans, so I used our stop at Canterbury to set my revenge in motion. Unfortunately it was not him after all.”

“How can you know that?” I asked. 

“I forgot that a fourth relative of mine had been given the right to contact me while we were abroad”, he said, staring at the pavement rather than me. “My stepbrother Campbell. It was 'C', not 'G' in Mr. Harold Godfreyson's letter. He is the unseen Mr. Sweyn Godfreyson's employer, and caring for someone enough to write to me for them is so much more him than Guilford.”

I thought for a moment before I got it.

“Ragnar!” I exclaimed. “The Striking Viking, who goes by the name of Mr. Stephen Gosport. So poor Guilford is going to be punished for something that he did not do for once. Oh dear how sad never mind.”

He shook his head at me, as we climbed the steps and rang the doorbell.

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“Sweyn?” Mr. Kerr said, looking surprised. “One of my best boys. He'll be taking over from me one day when Alan and I retire to the country.”

“You never mentioned that before”, Sherlock observed.

“I _am_ nearly forty-four”, his step-brother smiled. “Alan and I had long been looking for someone we can trust the boys to when we do go, and when he came up a couple of years ago we realized that he would be ideal. Luckily he has finished for the day and is likely working out in the gymnasium again. Alan, go and ask him to come up please.”

His lover left to find our fourth Godfreyson and soon returned with the fellow, who was still aglow from his workout. We all sat down and I felt almost intimated by all the prime specimens of Mankind sat opposite me. Then I remembered that I had the best of all four of them to take home with me, and smiled.

“Mr. Godfreyson”, Sherlock said and the giant's eyes lit up at his real name. “It is about your mother.”

“Is there a problem with her?” the fellow asked (like so many of the 'boys' here he sounded like he had had elocution lessons although I knew that he could 'turn on' his performance accent when needed as he had demonstrated to me the one time). “I do not maintain direct contact but two of my brothers keep me informed of her health and all.”

Sherlock smiled.

“Your brother Harold, a tide-waiter whom we 'chanced' to meet at Dover” – he looked pointedly at his stepbrother, who blushed - “bade us inquire as to why your contact with her and the rest of the family is so irregular.”

“I am not one to write long letters”, the giant smiled.

“Your naval brother is also concerned that your mother is suggesting a visit to see you in London”, Sherlock said smoothly. “Maybe even a surprise visit.”

That definitely got a reaction. The man clenched his fist and drew a deep breath.

“She must be stopped!” he said firmly. Sherlock chuckled.

“I have achieved many great feats in my time”, he said, “but stopping a lady from doing something once she has set her mind on it – that would surely be the ultimate challenge. But if she cannot be stopped, it is my suggestion that she may be.... deflected.”

Mr. Godfreyson leaned forward. I found it hard to think that he was but twenty-seven years of age; he looked solid enough to be ten years older although his white-blond hair helped with that effect.

“How so, sir?” he asked.

“Because you are a friend of Campbell here, that means you are a friend of mine”, I said. “I have certain unique contacts who can set up a fake business of any sort in a matter of days, if not hours. We could establish you as something seemingly respectable, find you a temporary home in a middle-class area so that your mother is not suspicious and then invite her to London and let her see that her eldest son is settled and happy and that she need not worry. I can also arrange a set of financial circumstances that make it look as if you have just been singularly fortunate, and that you have used this windfall to support her as any good son would.”

“I am happy here”, he smiled. “Chris and Al are wonderful, and I am honoured that they think I can carry on their good work. My brothers are good sticks as well, even if they find my way of life a bit rum.”

“Very 'rum' I dare say”, Sherlock said. “One which has inadvertently caused me a few problems today. Still let us make sure that your mother can have her mind set at rest, and then take things from there.”

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I was never so happy to see dear old 221B's Georgian façade looming over a wet Baker Street through the winter drizzle. Mrs. Hudson bless the woman had been alerted by a telegram that Sherlock had sent from Victoria and there was a delicious meal (yes, a fry-up with plenty of bacon!) waiting for us as soon as we were into our indoor clothes. It was heaven!

I do not know how but when our landlady brought up a tray with our meals, she gave me a knowing look that said she knew full well that things had changed between me and Sherlock since our departure. She said nothing, yet somehow I still thought of that pistol. 

Impressive. Terrifying, but impressive.

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The following day I opened the 'Times' to see what was afoot in the world and saw a familiar name on the front page. I read the article, smiled, then read it again. I was still grinning when Sherlock emerged from his room, looking as morning-dreadful as ever.

“There is a _fascinating_ article in the 'Times' this morning”, I said innocently. “Apparently the manager of the Grand Hotel, one Mr. Guilford Holmes and brother to the famous consulting detective Mr. Sherlock Holmes, has been sacked after he contrived to let a couple of male prostitutes into the elderly Duchess of Lavenham's suite. She returned from the theatre to something of a surprise!”

Sherlock looked more than a little embarrassed. I could guess why.

“They had a signed letter from him asking them to attend on a gentleman in Room 104”, I said. “Unfortunately they somehow went to 401 by mistake.”

“Ah well”, he said. “I am going to think of it as a down-payment on the next time that he annoys me in some way which, I am sure, cannot be that far into the future.”

I grinned even more.

“So that means you made a.....”

Damnation, he was looking at me again _and_ giving me the kicked puppy look! That was just not fair!

“Never mind”, I sighed as I handed over half my bacon as per usual. _“And don't you dare smirk!”_

He out on his most innocent look, which I did not believe for a minute.

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Postscriptum: Three weeks after Mr. Guilford Holmes had been the victim of a rare Sherlockian misjudgement, we received a call from Mr. Sweyn Godfreyson who told us how his mother had recently visited her son in his small West London house and been delighted that he was doing so well for himself working as a manager at a small shipping company. He was indeed taking over the running of some of Mr. Kerr's molly-houses as preparation for running the whole 'empire' and during his visit he mentioned to us that Campbell had been fortunate enough to find him a young deputy manager whom he deemed 'most capable'. I could not know that that particular choice would come back to haunt me personally, sooner than I deserved.

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	14. Interlude: Together

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1888\. Karma sometimes comes even more quickly than an unwise government official!

_[Narration by Mr. Lucifer Garrick, Esquire]_

It may have been the case that I was ever so slightly in the smallest possible spot of bother. _As in my cousin Sherlock was probably going to kill me!_

In my defence it had not been totally my fault. I had gone round to Sherlock's fearsome mother (having of course made damn sure that she had no stories waiting to be inflicted on anyone; thankfully the last had been inflicted on the luckless Torver three days since and he was still in his room, shaking). So I had thought myself completely safe.

Lord, had I underestimated the Fates and their evil machinations! Somehow Sherlock's mother had gotten the impression that Sherlock and John really were Sherlock-and-John, and that in her own words 'they were not just together, but together together!' And when she had confronted me with this idea I, who pretty much lie for a living, had been unable to deny it. 

_Sherlock would kill me when he found out!_

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My cab fought its way through the Friday traffic and I arrived home still fretting to find a familiar figure waiting for me on my doorstep. Benji. I was initially surprised before I remembered; his superior had given him the afternoon off because he had taken Bertha round to John's friend Doctor Peter Greenwood for a check-up..... oh Lord no! It cannot have been nine months since the last one, surely?

Sure enough the behemoth had that Happy Face of his again, which meant that in six to seven months' time there would be another little Jackson-Giles. No wonder they said the population of this city was expanding; the randy dog in front of me was responsible for a large part of that.

“Doctor Greenwood said that Bet's due in August”, he sniffed, “and I was so, so happy. I don't suppose you're free this afternoon, Mr. Lucifer sir?”

I was tired after a long hard week at work and still worried over Sherlock, but there was no way that I was going to be able to say no to Benji when he looked like that. Sighing, I led the way into the house and donned the Panama hat.

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Some hours later what was left of me was lying in my bed, definitely not cooing with pleasure as Benji applied the aftercare unguent for which I would have sold half my house just now. I felt supremely relaxed, if only because I knew that moving any muscle any time soon was beyond me.

“I saw Mr. Sherlock's mother the other day, Mr. Lucifer sir.”

I flinched automatically at my lover's casual remark, and even that slight movement sent a spasm of pain up my back that made my eyes water. 

“How?” I managed.

“She's taken up art classes at my studio”, Benji chuckled. “Steve and I were doing a pose mock-wrestling with each other to give the class practice with different skin colours the professor said, and she was there. With a damn ruler!”

 _That was Sherlock's mother all right,_ I thought resignedly. _Subtle as a brick!_

“And she asked if we would pose for her at her house”, Benji said.

I saw the unspoken question there. Steve Sawyer was a decent fellow who sold his body to support his mother, although he did as Benji so wonderfully put it 'bat for the other side'. He was a rough but good-hearted docker who Campbell was grooming to run at least part of his empire of.... Debating Societies; I could see why the studio had chosen him as he was (according to Campbell who had no filter on such things) 'as well-hung as Benji'. My lover was an obliging fellow, but he would not go ahead with this if I was unhappy with it.

“If she pays you for it, then why not?” I said, making a mental note to check on Steve's mother for him. “Although what with getting Bertha pregnant every five minutes and your other job, I am surprised that you have the time!”

“Very true, sir”, the behemoth remarked. “I'd best make the most of my time now, then!”

And with no warning he suddenly thrust right back inside of me again! The bastard!

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So I was smiling. And?

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	15. Interlude: Together Together

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1888\. Sherlock makes yet another mistake – and this time he pays for it in full!

_[Narration by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire]_

It was all a matter of timing. Luke had assured me that Mother did not have any stories ready to inflict on the next son unlucky enough to cross her path, so I went round to the family home the day after our return feeling confident that all would be well.

My sort-of cousin was about to become an ex-cousin!

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Mother did not indeed have any finished stories, which was one good thing. But once she had finished trying to crush me, I saw that terrible expression on her face which meant that she was about to start off on something. And sure enough she did.

“So wonderful that you and dear John are together at last!” she smiled. “Maybe not together together yet, but at least you _are_ together! Finally!”

Her train of thought seemed to have been re-directed onto a switchback. Again. I stared at her in confusion.

“Mother?”

“Dear Luke told me”, she smiled. “Of course you and John do not have what he and that wonderful Benji has – and having seen him and his yummy friend at my new art class, that is probably just as well. I would most definitely 'tap that' as they say these days....”

I was horrified! What had that bastard cousin of mine been saying? And it was damnably unfair that I could not kill Luke, as I would then have had to cope with Benji's Sad Face which not even I could endure. But at least the behemoth would be getting another huge load of free supplies very soon, and with luck he might finally end my cousin through sex!

“... but I am sure that it will happen soon, will it not dear?”

Now she was giving me what Carl called her 'hearts and flowers' look, the sort that made even the most feared soldier in Her Majesty's Army tremble. I shook my head in an effort to regain the world of sanity. I was sure that it was out there somewhere.

“Mother, John and I are just friends”, I managed at last.

She smiled sweetly, then her eyes very visibly dropped to my new ring.

“Of course, dear”, she smiled. _“Friends.”_

Phew!

 _“With benefits?”_ she added, quite unnecessarily.

“Mother!”

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I was still shaking when I arrived back in Baker Street. Thank the Lord that John was there and, knowing what family visits could do to me, opened his arms and pulled me into a cu..... a manly embrace.

“Watch it!” he said warningly.

I shuddered, but could feel myself relaxing in his arms. We were together again, not together together, just together, and.....

_Was it possible to divorce one's family? And how soon could I get all those supplies to Benji?_

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End file.
